


Reading Heeled

by cp_sorensen



Category: Anarchism - Fandom, Love - Fandom, espionage - Fandom, family - Fandom, military - Fandom, peace - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 23
Words: 95,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29588922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cp_sorensen/pseuds/cp_sorensen
Summary: A federal task force tries to pacify Chicago. Local anarchists build a kinder world in the face of this oppression.





	1. Chapter 1

I LEANED BACK ON the park bench and let my breath float up to the scornful streetlight above. A lone bird chirped somewhere in the cold distance. I looked around. The park was deserted. I wiggled my knapsack off my shoulders and onto my lap. From its folds I withdrew an unsanctioned newspaper. I re-shouldered my knapsack and then began to read the cover story.

Chicago, IL (IJJ) — None of Haruki McGill’s classmates know what happened to him after he returned from the bar one night and was immediately escorted away by campus police. Not his neighbors back home in Pittsburgh. Not his housemates at college. Not his professors. But they all fear that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials may have beat him to death. 

We at Independent Justice Journalists, IJJ, issue this report after four months of interviews with Haruki McGill’s friends, peers, professors, and family. All interviewees provided information solely under strict conditions of anonymity out of fear that Homeland officials would punish them or seek retribution against their families and loved ones. IJJ has withheld and altered names in order to safeguard the identities of those who risked so much to talk with us.

The prevailing opinion among McGill’s friends is that he was transferred to the regional DHS detention camp, which many believe is located on the grounds of the old Theodore Stone Forest, right off the Stevenson Expressway. Riot police in armored vehicles immediately repel any approaches that journalists try to make towards the unmarked, windowless facility. 

McGill is an international relations major at the University of Chicago, though his peers and professors describe him as taciturn on domestic political issues. Political crimes that warrant inquisition from U.S. authorities range from rendezvousing with ‘anti-American elements’ to harboring ‘extremist views.’

Analysts across underground movements view disappearances as part of a larger U.S. government effort that leverages big data and surveillance capabilities to keep the population under control. Those who question the U.S. oligarchy perched in Washington, D.C., or their priorities—which include endless war, austerity measures for the masses, and limitless domestic military operations—are considered prime candidates to be disappeared.

LAW & ORDER

Laws enacted by U.S. Congress during the early War on Terror—including the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the D.C. regime to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens on U.S. soil—have facilitated domestic rendition and disappearance of thousands of citizens and residents, especially students, political activists, and non-corporate journalists. Other laws—like the 2013 dilution and revocation of the Smith-Mundt Act—have helped placate the masses by boosting the U.S. government’s domestic propaganda activities.

Within the D.C. political class that caters to the edicts of the oligarchy, the surest path to professional promotion is to lead a crackdown on a major metropolis. Chertoff did it in 2021 in Washington, D.C., with his famous apartheid wall just east of the Capitol Building. Winslow did it in Miami in 2022 by crushing the Glade Uprising. Hauser, seen by underground analysts as far more ruthless than such predecessors, is now in line for promotion to the coveted Deputy Director position within the Central Bureau of National Intelligence (CBNI), the successor agency to the Office of National Intelligence. He has his eyes set on Chicago, according to two former intelligence officials who have retired within the past year and who sympathize with the anti-oligarchy principles.

International human rights organizations, which are largely barred from boarding international flights to the United States, have argued that repressive measures enacted by the U.S. federal government only embolden underground groups that are opposed to the oligarchy. The human rights non-governmental organization Exoner-Nation Global has gone on record stating that the ‘security measures’ taken by D.C. especially over the past thirty-eight months, have only fed mass hatred of the regime and its security forces. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” states Jack Feldspar, director of Exoner-Nation Global. “The government built up a massive police state by hyping fear of the Other, militarizing U.S. media in the process. The surveillance state, once it was unleashed upon the domestic populace, only engendered an angry backlash from a U.S. citizenry accustomed to a modicum of freedom.” Accordingly, Feldspar says, career bureaucrats in D.C. have deemed every underground faction operating against the regime as a ‘terror’ organization.

The federal government refers all inquiries to the Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County. CJTF-CCC is the regional command whose area of operations covers the greater Chicago metropolitan area. A CJTF-CCC spokesperson recently provided IJJ the following statement: 

The United States government does not operate any domestic detention or rendition program. The United States government does, however, offer our citizens numerous vocational training programs, which are run under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security, and are in full compliance of federal law and international legal frameworks. Graduates of our vocational programs consistently praise our attentive instructional methodology as beneficial to their patriotism as well as their job prospects.

THE WINDY CITY

Chicago is one of the most heavily policed cities in North America. According to the latest data offered by the Brussels-based Alliance of Investigative Journalists, other heavily policed cities in North America include D.C., New York, Ottawa, Baltimore, Ciudad de Panamá, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, and Ciudad de México.

Policing in the community areas of Hyde Park, Parkway Gardens, and Woodlawn is a microcosm of how the Department of Homeland Security carries out its activities nationwide. Vehicle identification devices and state-of-the-art security cameras armed with facial recognition technology crowd building cornices, bridges, and streetlights. In some districts, barricaded DHS depots and police substations have been constructed at a minimum of every six hundred meters. Metal detectors hog storefronts. Any vendors wishing to sell food or wares on the street must submit to a rigorous background check, and then don mandatory flak jackets and heavy helmets during business hours. The contiguous campus of the University of Chicago is walled off, more to keep academics in than to keep the indigent out. Mobile checkpoints and armored personnel carriers pockmark major streets and avenues. Their arrangement varies according to an algorithm issued by CJTF-CCC every morning at 0500. Access to the Jackson Park waterfront is restricted. Aircraft patrol the skies. They include a combination of helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles, and C-12 fixed-wing reconnaissance aircraft. 

DHS planning documents obtained by IJJ indicate a 5.5% increase in the Chicago municipality’s ‘public security spending’ this fiscal year, reaching slightly under $11 billion. These funds do not include federal funding for U.S. Northern Command, CJTF-CCC, or other government organizations involved in monitoring and quelling the restive Chicago populace. Citizens are encouraged to voice their displeasure with any budgetary process by emailing their congressional representatives and Senators, but such perfunctory steps seem to make little difference, a sentiment shared by the citizens and residents we at IJJ have interviewed. D.C. has not enacted tangible policy changes reflecting the will of the people in decades, according to most households.

For the past thirty-eight months, the battles in Chicago and other major North American cities have been decidedly in favor of the authorities. Lives in limbo, shattered families, mass detentions, and stifled communities are…

“Damn it!” I yelled. I stood up as fast as my tired bones allowed and tucked the newspaper beneath my wool tabard.   
A spotlight from an armored personnel carrier glared against the bench, a crop of trees, and me.   
I made a move to run.  
“Freeze!” came a mechanical voice.   
“Shit,” I muttered. I extended my hands fully, away from my body. I knew the police had no qualms about shooting anyone who disobeyed their commands. I looked straight ahead, away from the spotlight, as the police officers approached, boots crunching through the hard layer of spring snow.   
I eyed a fellow homeless person as I waited for the inevitable. Across the street, she warmed her hands over a fire raging in a fifty-five-gallon drum.  
I inhaled deeply as the crunching got louder. I had been in this situation before. While other homeless relied on one another, I was more of a loner. Self-reliance, I’d call it. I was satisfied in my own world. Somehow, I always managed. Before the oligarchy’s crackdown, I had thought of social isolation as a health problem. Now, I viewed it as a blessing. Being alone let me be more efficient and innovative as I went about scavenging for food or dodging mercenary patrols.  
The spotlight from the armored personnel carrier dimmed as the officers’ flashlights took over. How many are there? I wondered. Six, I guessed.   
“Turn around, thug!” The voice was harsh. Human, not mechanical this time.  
I turned around. A well-fed policeman stood four paces away. His fellow officers fanned out around me. I noticed two of the men were not wearing police uniforms. Mercenaries, no doubt. Plain clothes and no morals. I counted the men. Five in total.  
One cop stepped forward, a lone crunch in the snow.  
Sometimes a little casual chit-chat would disarm the pigs. I eyed the rank displayed on the officer’s sleeve, and gave it a shot: “Three chevrons, eh? What is that? Sergeant?”  
“Show us your cards,” the officer demanded, referring to the set of two identity cards every resident and citizen of the U.S. had to carry at all times. An eighth-generation RFID chip in each, the card was one way that the authorities kept tabs on the population.   
I produced the two cards. They would pass superficial inspection, but their RFID chips had been neutralized weeks ago. A full scan of my cards would lead me into even hotter water. My palms baked inside my shabby mittens.  
The sergeant grabbed my identity cards, eyed them, and handed them back roughly. I stole a glance at the officer’s watch. Its bulge sat just above the man’s black tactical gloves. 5:05PM. Damn. Daylight savings, I remembered. I should have known.   
“The park’s closed,” the sergeant stated, getting to the point. “What are you still doing in here?”   
I stumbled forward.   
A tall mercenary with a meaty neck encroached. “Step back!” he said, jabbing my shoulder with the butt of his baton.   
The sergeant looked at me blankly.   
“What’s in the bag?” the tall mercenary asked, eying my knapsack.  
I did not reply, a small victory savored.   
The tall mercenary responded with a blitz of strikes against my thighs, ribs, and shoulders. The extra layers I wore to ward against the lingering winter chill provided little protection. I fell to the ground and relinquished my knapsack.  
The tall mercenary motioned to a peer. The peer stepped forward. They upturned the bag together. The contents clattered against the crisp shell of white snow. A metal cup, a box of matches, a few pens, a flashlight, a handheld radio, and a frayed rope lay still under the waxing moon. The beams of their flashlights fluttered over my gear.  
“No unsanctioned electronics, you know that,” the sergeant said, stepping forward. He picked up the hand-crank radio and returned to his position.   
The second mercenary kicked my belongings, scattering them here and there.  
“Health check!” the sergeant ordered.   
Two deputies stepped forward, one bearing a thick grey rectangle that looked to me like an old graphing calculator I once had in high school. A DNA scanner, I rued. I knew this was going to be painful. Updates to the Task Force’s biometric data collection program were a perennial part of the oligarchy’s regional public security directives.   
“You’ve already got my body scan, eye scan, voiceprint, and fingerprints,” I grumbled. “Now you fellows need my DNA as well?”  
The tall mercenary tapped his baton against his gloved palm.   
I shut up. These guys were all the same. Low-level enforcers, they could never see the big picture.  
The sergeant fiddled with my radio. His deputies got ready to administer the DNA swab and the hypodermic pump. They rolled up the ratty sleeves on my right arm. My thermals kept sliding down, so one deputy clamped his hand hard on my forearm.   
“Hold still.”   
The tall mercenary took two steps and placed his baton around my neck. His baton ground my Adam’s apple like a bad driver grating rims against the curb. The deputy stabbed at my arm twice, catching the vein on the second attempt.   
I looked straight ahead. I never liked the sight of blood, especially my own, so I studied the deputy’s winter cap. Standard issue. Black rim. Earflaps hanging loosely. I felt weak. My technique to distract myself wasn’t working. I looked down. Rivulets of blood were now broad smears along my forearm.   
A single shrill beep caused the sergeant to look up. “Our device,” he reported, shuffling forward, “says you’re trustworthy.”  
I let my knees give way just as the deputy retracted the DNA scanner. The tall mercenary removed his baton, happy to see me crumple.   
“For now,” the sergeant concluded. He threw a kick into my stomach. I hammed it up, throwing myself higher than necessary. Landing hard, I thought about the mercenaries’ true bosses: the oligarchy. Many different groups fought the oligarchy on the ground. Though they differed greatly, all of the groups could agree on one thing: the oligarchy did not care about the people or the common good. The oligarchs distorted federal, state, and local government in order to serve their own narrow personal aims, which usually meant enormous short-term profit. I coughed. The tall mercenary smiled approvingly at the sergeant, who then kicked me again.   
“Get to walking.”   
But I was already on my way. I caught the strap of my knapsack, and hastily picked up my belongings with tired mittens. I stumbled forward. A weathered tree broke my tumble. I steadied myself against the tree, rotated around so my knapsack was cushioning me against the friendly bark, got one last look at my assaulters, and walked away. I smiled to the hard snow, though I didn’t let the police or the mercenaries see.  
I tried to look on the bright side. I appreciated a good walk. Always did. I liked to take advantage of the time alone. I would develop my ideas and cherish the creativity that came with long stretches of alone time. I had to. Day by day, I had gotten to know the world around me through observation and reflection. Happiness, I had determined long ago, was not depending on others; only me, my state of mind, can make me truly happy. Such an approach helped me cope with my present circumstances. I trudged along.  
“Hey!”   
I knew the voice. The tall mercenary.   
“You forgot this!” the mercenary yelled.   
I turned around. The tall mercenary and his partner were jogging in my direction. The tall mercenary was holding up a pen.   
“Thank you,” I whispered as they approached. I held out my hand.   
The shorter mercenary burst toward me, tackling me and driving me to the frozen earth. The taller mercenary followed close behind, and began kicking me in the ribs and the back.   
“Never… see you… again…” one mercenary grunted through choppy breaths.  
I first tried to play defense, but too many of their blows made their way through. I coiled up, a fetus in the snow. Play dead, I told myself. So I went limp like I was confronting a grizzly.  
I felt the shorter mercenary roll off of me.   
Their assault was lightening up.  
It’s working! I thought.  
I opened one eye. An oily red swam in. I opened the other. Both mercenaries were sprawled out, lifeless on the earthy white, like parched starfish on baked rocks.  
“They’re… dead?” I asked. I immediately suspected a sniper, but I hadn’t heard any rifle discharge. Baffled and terrified, I looked around for my pen, grabbed it with a hunk of frozen snow, and scampered away.   
I ducked, dodged, and flailed all the way to the eastern footpath of the park. One thought played on repeat: I have to hide, I have to hide. The police and mercenaries would soon be out for blood.   
I exited the park the way I had come in hours earlier, through the gap in the chain-linked fence one section south of the northeast corner. I looked both ways and jogged across the damp street. My boots slapped shallow puddles. I looked right. The homeless woman was still next to the drum in which a white fire raged. Though, instead of warming her hands, she was on one knee stowing a pipe in a hardy black rucksack. I moved to the corner of the nearest alley and hugged the wall to get a better look. I glanced towards the park and then back at the woman. She looked up. I ducked into the alleyway.   
The alleyway was familiar. I knew I had my choice of three exits: a fire escape led to the roof, favorable for spreading out, though vulnerable if my pursuers called in precise air support; a bulkhead all the way down on the right, good for hiding, but the storefront into which its depths surfaced faced the street; and the loading dock on the left, halfway down. The final option I selected. It led to an old sporting goods store. The current occupant was an acquaintance, though one who’d be less than pleased with the subsequent arrival of a mercenary snatch squad. If it came to that.   
“I’m Violet.”   
“The…?” I turned around. It was the homeless woman.  
Athletic with honey hair sprouting under a black wool cap, she stood before me smiling. Her wool shawl, the color of midnight blue, covered her arms down to her waist, as well as the unmistakable shell of a rucksack behind her.   
“Did you…?” I gestured to the park.   
“We are but simple mice. They are mechanized cats.”   
My eyes strayed to the pipe—no, the rifle barrel—jutting out from her rucksack.  
“We need to move,” she said. She wore the look of a Labrador caught with a powdered donut in her mouth.   
Mystified and bewildered, I nodded.   
“Come.” She grabbed my mitten with her hand, cold as steel, and yanked me down the alley.   
I winced. My ribs creaked.  
“Keep up, ya bum!” Violet encouraged, too cheerfully for my bruised state.  
“I liked that radio,” I muttered as Violet boosted me up onto the loading dock.

A jolly bald man in a beige sweater-vest ladled hot soup into his kids’ bowls. His wife arrived at the table, a carafe of red wine in hand. The children, twins, laughed at a joke they’d recall fondly in their twilight years. The jolly father’s smirk bloomed into a gap-toothed smile. He looked beyond his children to the dog bed in the corner where his faithful German shepherd galloped in her sleep. 

Blink. 

A tired bald man in a beige sweater-vest divvied cold leeks onto his kids’ plates. His wife arrived at the table, a plastic jug of brackish water in hand. The children laughed at a joke. Their father swallowed his frustration, trying not to snuff out their merriment with the hand he’d been dealt. Beyond the table, a cold dog bed memorialized a loyal friend.

Blink. 

I came to, the wisp of a dream still in my eyes. I assessed my surroundings before moving a muscle. My left temple rested on damp concrete. A frozen breeze plucked at my exposed hackles like a drunken virtuoso. Something creaked, maybe a hinge on a window or door. The slow grind of heavy vehicles on asphalt hit my ears, bringing with them all the urgency of my situation. 

I stirred. I opened my eyes. Violet was sitting under a window. Her back against exposed brick, she leaned like she was at a picnic under a broad oak tree. She was eating something. Bread, it looked like through my crusty, sleepy squint. A lone streetlight hovered outside, highlighting her with its moody flicker.   
She offered me her food with an arc of her hand. I nodded and crawled forward to accept. I held the food in my hand for a bit and then sat up. My hip popped. With my back and tender ribs against a crate, I took a bite of the bread. I tasted the salt of my mitten too. It added a little something.   
“I was about to leave you,” Violet joked. “Hell of a time to catch some shuteye.”   
“How far up are we?” I asked. I forced a swallow.   
“Second floor,” she whispered. “What are you reading these days?”  
“Huh?”  
“What are you reading?” she repeated.  
I heard her words, but I didn’t understand; the question was too random. We were in a life-and-death situation and she was yacking about books. I didn’t understand.  
“You read, don’t you? I saw you reading a newspaper back there in the park.” She untied her left boot.  
“I read… yes.” I tapped the newspaper underneath my tabard.   
“Well, what do you read? Just newspapers or books too?” She started retying her boot.   
“Books.” I coughed. I thought of my favorite library, several blocks west of our current position. It was still functioning. Well, at least I was able to go in and out. As far as I knew, it only opened for those who were close with the proprietor. I had known her before the current hostilities had started. She’d let me in because I operated by the old take-a-book-leave-a-book method. She liked that. Though I rarely saw anyone else in there, she was always sitting behind her desk, guarding the hardened door with her trusty crossbow.  
“What’s your favorite book?” Violet asked.  
“Call of the Wild,” I replied.  
“Who wrote it?” she asked.   
I was curious as to what she knew and what she didn’t. “A man named Jack London,” I answered, believing she was putting me on.  
“Why did he write it?”  
“Huh?”  
“Why did he write Call of the Wild?” She spoke as if teaching a first-grader advanced algebra.  
“Why? I don’t know. I know he spent some time in northwest Canada before writing it. I think that’s where some of the story takes place.”  
“A traveling man?” She yawned and moved her hands in front of her face to catch the warmth.  
“Yeah, but more of a man of the people.” I quickly amended my assessment. “Though that’s debatable. He made a lot of money, but I still think his heart was with the lower classes.”   
“A man of the people.” Violet imbued the words with a dreamy character. “So his background was with the people?”  
“You could say that. At least, that’s what I would argue.”   
“You’ve read his other work?”   
I nodded. Her presence, not the chitchat, put me at ease.   
“I have a copy,” I said. “I can loan it to you sometime. Or we can go visit a library one day and pick up a copy together.”   
“I’d like that.” She scooted closer. “Where’s your favorite library?”  
I didn’t answer her. She looked up. It took a bit of work to keep her gaze. I soon faltered. I’m sure she understood by my silence that the answer to her question was out of bounds.  
“Thank you for the knowledge,” she whispered. She checked her front pockets.  
“What d’you mean?”  
“I like to research a bit about a book before I decide to crack it open. From what little you’ve told me, this’ll be worth the read.”   
She looked me up and down. I shivered, from the cold, I presumed. I scrambled to offer her a question and get her eyes off of me.   
“Would you say you’re an active reader?”   
She squinted dismissively, but quickly caught herself and said, “Good question.” With a tuck and a push, she moved onto the balls on her feet. She sat there in a controlled squat, rocking slightly side to side. “I guess so. I don’t make much time for books these days, but I should. When I do read, though, I try to read actively. I weigh arguments against one another. I build up connections among books, spokes among spokes, I’d say.”  
“Spokes, huh? Good skill for someone in the underground,” I noted.  
Her ears perked up and her nose started twitching, manifestations of synchronized intuition. “We need to move.”  
TWEE-OOP! The unmistakable sound of a police siren accompanied a spotlight, which sullied the window over Violet’s shoulder as it swept past.  
“They’re rookies,” I countered. “I say we stay put for a bit.” If they had been pros or even veteran pigs, they’d have not alerted us aurally and visually.   
“Rookies or not, they’ll soon comb this place. Or they’ll use one of their fancy ass devices to see through the walls. We’ve got the high ground, but that doesn’t mean anything if they call in backup. And I’m not looking for a fight today.”  
“I’m staying,” I insisted. “I’ve made it this far trusting my gut. Stay with me.”  
“Yeah,” Violet said, sounding a bit concessionary before changing her tone. “You were doing a hell of a job getting your ass kicked in the park back there.”  
“Why did you kill them?” I snapped. I took a breath, trying to maintain control. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “How’s that the solution?”  
“Yell like that and you’ll get us both killed,” she cautioned.   
I didn’t budge.   
Violet finished tightened a few straps on her rucksack. She then looked at me and shouldered the pack.  
“I know another way out of here,” she argued. “Fourth floor.” She pointed up with a frosty finger. “The south wall is busted clean through. We can climb into the adjacent building, scramble underground, and hide out a bit.”  
Tires screeched outside.  
“We’re sitting ducks,” she argued one final time. She bounced higher in her squat, testing her muscles, ready to rush.  
A tracked vehicle ground the pavement in a nearby alleyway.   
“Okay,” I conceded.   
“Stay low,” my rescuer ordered. And she was off in a flash.


	2. Chapter 2

SHE MOVED LIKE A leopard.   
My old GI flashlight lit her footfalls at random as I scampered after her. She sparked off the staircase steps, gaining intensity and speed along the way like a match being lit.  
Somewhere in the depths beneath the block of buildings, I paused to deal with my flashlight. I tapped the side twice with my palm. The bulb flashed strongly and then faded. Just before it died the bulb’s spill caught Violet’s heels disappearing around the corner. Great. I began to worry. Not because I was alone in the dark. That was a frequent enough occurrence living on the street. I worried because, alone in the dark in new territory, a thought detonated across my mind like a Bouncing Betty. What if she lured me down here? She must’ve seen my gear through her scope. What did she know? She’d know I had decent items, items that could fetch a fair trade at underground fetes. I closed my eyes tightly, briefly, to shed these thoughts, but they settled in my chest to the right of my heart.   
“Violet?” I asked the darkness as I began to replace my batteries by feel. Instead of SPORTS, an acronym to help a guy like me un-jam a firearm on the go, I initiated STUDD—shake the flashlight, tap the lens, unscrew the tailcap, dump the dead batteries, and dispense a fresh set—in order to revive my lifeless flashlight. The acronym was not necessary. Any goofball could put batteries in a flashlight. But coming up with stuff like that, among other ideas, kept my mind busy—distracted, even—alone on the streets.  
With new batteries in my old flashlight I flicked the switch. The flashlight came to life. I clenched my jaw and did my best to catch up. Obstacles cluttered the pathway ahead of me.   
I dodged a few crates, weaved around a stack of railway irons, splashed two puddles, and, eyes on the path ahead of me, rounded the bend.   
“RAAAGH!”   
I jumped. I actually jumped.   
Her face wasn’t scary, but I was so focused on my feet that I wasn’t looking more than a pace in front of me. I stumbled forward and caught my breath, hands upon my knees.  
Violet laughed and laughed, though no sound accompanied her deep heaves. It was a silent laugh, like the kind perfected by an old Master Sergeant who’d spent years in the bush. Somehow I had held onto my flashlight. All I could do in anger was rub the L-joint of the flashlight against my scruffy chin. I wanted to wring her neck. No, I wanted to wring my own neck; I was embarrassed that someone could make me jump out of my socks so easily. I fancied myself a pro, a veteran of the streets. And now my new acquaintance was tossing a little ice melt into my wound.  
“This is why I work alone,” I grumbled. “I…” But I had nothing more to say.   
“I’m sorry. I am.” Violet’s eyes were still squinting with merriment. “Never lose sight of playfulness. A little bounce and a lot of mirth go a long way while fighting the oligarchy.” She grabbed my hand. “I won’t do it again. I promise. C’mon!” Her cheeks inflated like a chipmunk, probably stifling laughter. I followed willingly.  
Our path was convoluted. A storm drain gave way to metal grates suspended above a churning sewer, which in turn bled into another storm drain. Violet tread lightly and always managed to avoid the decomposing vermin and the patches of standing water. I wasn’t so skilled. We covered a lot of territory, though I’m pretty sure she was leading me in circles at a few points, all part of effective security practices. We skirted the surface—although I didn’t hear a soul, I did sneak a peek at the crescent moon through a subway vent—only to dive deep underground once more. A foul-smelling subbasement led us to a shaft that opened into a service elevator. After a period of feeling our way through the dark—I was feeling, Violet seemed to be going more on memory—we cut through a strip of underground railway. Although a good chunk of Chicago’s rapid transit system, the “L,” was elevated, long stretches were also underground. I think it was the old blue line we straddled. We were about a two hundred meters from the nearest station, and I wasn’t about to ask my rescuer-cum-frightener for any orienteering assistance. Plus, Violet soon stopped short and made us squat in the shadows until her senses said the coast was clear. I was happy for the break; my life on the streets had usually proceeded at a far mellower pace, and I was very tired. We crossed to the west side of the tracks and exited through a service door. It was sealed with a simple push-button, six-digit number pad. Violet shielded my line of sight with her body as she typed in the code. The panel didn’t light up or turn green or anything. It didn’t even beep in confirmation. I just heard the faintest of clicks. Violet curtsied sarcastically and whispered, “After you.” The service door led us to a stuffy concrete passageway and then to a rickety spiral staircase. At the bottom of the staircase came a long corridor where guards posed as lounging vagrants, though it seemed to me that they had long ago given up any real commitment to their pretense of nonchalance. Two doors stood out at the end of the corridor. The door on the left, Violet told me, was the entrance. The door on the right, she said, was the emergency exit. We went through the one on the left.   
“Welcome to the anarchist harbor,” Violet greeted. 

The halls of the harbor bustled with friendly faces, like a gaggle of corduroyed scientists dedicated to a common cause. They evinced a sort of compassionate determination.  
Smooth limestone walls, decorated sparsely with encouraging scribbles, glimmering graffiti, and modest tapestries, funneled most everyone towards iron doors at the far end of the hall. I walked forward.  
Square shelves, spaced every three paces or so, housed single candles, the combined might of which graced the hall with a powerful illumination. Women and men darted about. Endless unfulfilled tasks etched a dusty worry upon their faces. Youth skipped and capered, still helping out. Reminding the elders of the usefulness of play, I thought. I caught some elders obeying, linking arms as they pranced past me.   
Generous smiles spoke as I shuffled through the crowd. The anarchists, despite all the oppression they faced, seemed to treat one another kindly, respectfully. Guests seemed to be held in the highest esteem. Residents greeted me.  
“Welcome.”  
“Our ale is yours.”  
“Peace pack.”  
“You look good, friend. You look good.”  
“Honor your memory every day.”  
Their welcomes were genuine. I enjoyed their unique language and the warmth that accompanied their gentle words. I replied in turn. ‘Peace pack’ was my favorite greeting. I did not know the origins of the phrase, but I appreciated its concise value.   
I looked around to find Violet, but I did not see her. Some anarchists offered me fruit as I walked. Apples and cranberries, mostly. A knot of people gathered around a bulletin board halfway down the main hallway. I approached. Violet was not among them. A table stood to the side of the bulletin board. Resting on top were two pitchers—wine and water, from the looks of it—and a neat stack of facecloths. The bulletin board was covered with newspaper clippings, but everyone was huddled around one in particular.  
“… one of the oligarchy’s favorite newspapers, too!” a young woman exclaimed as I reached the bulletin board. I stepped forward and read:

White House Touts Special-Operations Raids   
By Ronald Danza   
Strumberg News

For the first time in three years the Pentagon has shared information about raids conducted by the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Northern Command inside the continental United States.

From 1 October through 30 September, last fiscal year, special operations forces belonging to DHS and NORTHCOM conducted over 4,050 ground operations against ‘domestic terror targets.’

This number comes as no surprise to Dr. Ralph Desmond of the Center for Planning and Prognostics, an esteemed Washington, D.C., think tank. “Our nation’s defense establishment is tight-lipped about these matters, but I thought the number would be a bit higher,” Dr. Desmond said. “However, many different units operate under regional task forces, so that could account for any accounting discrepancy.”

The Pentagon insists, however, that all operations involving DHS and NORTHCOM personnel were designed to ‘enable or advise’ local police forces in the fight against terror.

“It’s important to note that these statistics, regardless of the metrics, reflect a commitment inside the Beltway to mission success. I, for one, applaud the decision made by Congress earlier this year to allow task force commanders more leeway in the field. Progress is being made,” Dr. Desmond stressed.

The Pentagon also released some figures regarding airstrikes, though it did not parse whether the strikes were conducted via unmanned aerial vehicle or manned aircraft. Last fiscal year, NORTHCOM personnel conducted exactly 1,400 airstrikes within the continental United States. 

The Pentagon did not release any information regarding enemy killed, but it did insist in an accompanying press release that ‘all efforts were made to minimize collateral damage.’ According to a Unified Intercontinental Media report last month, civilian casualties on U.S. soil numbered six. 

Pentagon spokesperson Jessica Herbert commented on the timing of the release of these statistics: “The past fiscal year was a decisive time for DHS, particularly given their increasing ability to carry out special operations raids without the assistance of contractors or Northern Command. This is a real force multiplier for us and our regional task forces.” Dr. Desmond elaborated, “These task forces are the future of special operations activity within the Homeland. The personnel contained within bring remarkable skill sets to the fight.”

“Six civilian casualties?” I asked.   
Nobody replied.   
“Look at how the journalist uses the Pentagon’s terminology,” one young reader remarked “Disgusting.”  
“This article is nothing but psychological warfare,” another noted. Her cheerful tones clashed with her gloomy message like pots and pans falling on a tiled floor.   
A hand swiped through the frame of my vision, taking with it the newspaper article. Only a corner scrap remained tacked to the wall. The owner of the hand yelled that the regime’s propaganda belonged in the appropriate room for analysis. I looked left. It was Violet. With a flick of her head she indicated that we should move on. I moved, though I wanted to stay and read the other articles.  
Following Violet was no easy task, even in decent lighting. She moved quickly through the crowds as though she could sense three steps ahead and duck and weave accordingly. I did my best to follow, all while pondering the newspaper’s possible implications on the tide of battle. I tried to keep my face cheerful, intent on not chipping the good spirit that suffused this anarchist harbor. Though I managed to navigate the crowd adequately, I soon found myself far behind Violet.

Violet was nowhere to be seen as I surfaced at the end of the hallway in front of the iron doors, which struck me as vestiges of an old castle. Given what I knew about the resourcefulness of the anarchists, the doors very well could have been salvaged from some ancient armory. I knocked twice, the bottom of my clenched fist barely resonating on the colossal black panels.  
The right-side door opened with a smooth clank. Two commanding men stepped through, confronting me with barrel chests. One wore a flak jacket beneath a loose green fleece and the other wore a dark blue cloak, clasped at the top so his arms, and possibly weaponry, remained hidden underneath. Scars dashed both of their faces. Several fresh stitches skated along the temple of the man in the dark blue cloak. Both men smiled.  
“Good day to you, friend,” one of them spoke.   
I could not tell which one.  
“May I enter?” I asked.   
“We haven’t seen you around here before. Are you new?”  
“You could say that.” I tried to keep my voice friendly. I forced a grin.  
The guards didn’t budge or offer more conversation. One twitched as a patter of feet approached behind me. Recognizing a familiar face, or perhaps a signal of some sort, the guard motioned for the approaching comrade to enter through the iron doors. I tried to peek through the door, but the guard quickly returned to his position.   
“What’s under your cloak?” I asked.  
The guards remained silent.   
I studied their faces. The guard in green fleece and flak jacket had the parched eyes of a man hung-over, though I was sure he was sharp as a Task Force bayonet. The eyes of the man in the dark blue cloak danced about the crowd roguishly. I wondered what my eyes were doing.  
“C’mon, my friend.” Violet reached between the two guards and, bumping them aside, pulled me through.   
I smiled sheepishly as I passed between the imposing trees.   
“He’s with me,” she added, as if her clout needed any additional upkeep.  
We stepped into a cavernous chamber. The massive room was packed with people. Light roamed up from a bend between the floor and walls, arching against a domed ceiling that seemed carved out of bedrock. Vines of all gauges crawled along the walls, basking in the light and competing for stature. A series of large doors stood along the far side of the chamber. I guessed the doors numbered eight, but the tree in the middle of the room concealed more than a few. The tree. A giant tree surged in front of my eyes. Its roots alone reached the height of one woman’s shoulder, the ridged trunk at least ten paces broad. I looked up. The verdant canopy splashed into the domed ceiling and disappeared beyond.  
Violet caught me gaping.  
I glanced at her. “The bark must be five inches thick.” It was all I could say.  
The audience of people sitting in the chamber flowed up and down, side to side, like a wave. Whispers, excited feet, and strong convictions all enhanced the thrilling vibe. Violet and I took a seat.   
A stout woman in black cargo pants and a green polo shirt stepped up on a massive root, the day’s soapbox. She started speaking immediately. The crowd quieted down. She went over logistics: items in the lost and found; volunteers needed to travel northwest and trade with a faction from Madison; extended hours for the medical clinic this week; and a three-day weather forecast. Good move—taking advantage of the crowd to get everyone on the same page. The speaker then listed a few items for people to scavenge. “I also ought to mention one more thing, something that’s been on our minds recently. The Tactical Machinery Group.” Any remaining chitchat in the audience ceased. You could hear a pin drop. I held my breath.   
The stout woman explained, “I checked our perimeter defenses this morning, and there are no signs that TMG is onto us.” The crowd sighed. I couldn’t help but chuckle under my breath. TMG must have been quite formidable to elicit such a reaction. “We will continue to…” The stout woman stopped speaking and trailed off when her eyes connected with Violet’s. Smiling and nodding, the speaker continued. “We have a guest for you tonight. I’m not going to resort to credentialism or hype her experience. Without any ado, I present to you one of our esteemed friends.”  
Much to my surprise, Violet gently tapped me on the shoulder, as if to impart a momentary goodbye, and stood up. She weaved quickly through the crowd—at times all I could see was her midnight blue shawl—and was soon atop the root soapbox, head and shoulders above the crowd.   
“I have been nominated to talk to you tonight about the struggle and the obstacles ahead. First, I want you to know that we’re doing all we can to evade the Task Force’s patrols in general and TMG in specific. Despite the obstacles ahead of us, and they are awesome indeed, I remain optimistic for three reasons.” The audience, rapt, waited.   
“Reason number one: anarchism. We’ve got the best ideology around.”  
That elicited a heartening laugh from the audience. I smiled.  
“We take care of one another. We say screw you to those trying to impose hierarchy. And we have a rich tradition of doing the right thing, dating back centuries across societies—European, African, Asian, and American.  
“We always knew the state was destructive and oppressive. The entrenched oligarchy now only proves our point. We are at the forefront of its annihilation, and we will not stop until hierarchy is abolished, exploitation ends, and freedom for all is achieved.”  
The crowd roared quick and hard. I knew we were deep underground, but I wondered how far the sound traveled.  
“I tell you, in times like these, people are drawn to anarchism. I see many new faces in the crowd. This is a testament to the attraction that anarchism poses to people of all stripes. All for all, as we say.”  
“All for all!” yelled a core group within the audience.   
Violet adjusted her footing, spreading her feet wider. She now bridged two colossal roots.   
“Reason number two: battlefield successes.”   
“To hell with the Task Force!” someone to my left yelled.   
Violet smiled. “That’s right. To hell with them.” She winked at no one in particular. “I’m not going to get into too many operational details…” Violet paused. “Jesus, I sound like them, don’t I?” She laughed and the audience in turn laughed. She adopted a mocking tone and continued, “We won’t disclose operational details or sources and methods to the press.” The audience laughed louder. “Just kidding. Where was I? So I’m not going to talk about too many specifics, but I will tell you that we’ve made significant gains out there. Not just in terms of territory, but also in terms of popularity among the people. Because that’s it. At the end of the day, that’s what matters. That’s who we’re fighting for. The good people and the planet.”  
Mentioning the planet prodded the audience into a particularly fierce round of applause. It was as if they applauded to vent steam in addition to displaying their enthusiasm for Violet’s message. I too was enthralled. Really. The anarchists fascinated me.  
“Reason number three: all of you.”  
I followed Violet’s hand as it panned over the grateful crowd. Eyes riveted and mouths pursed. Violet’s message captivated all. A particularly large gentleman stood out to the left of the platform. He reminded me of a giant professional wrestler I used to follow in my youth. He had all the same proportions: large forehead, massive hands, and barrel belly. I hoped he was a gentle giant.   
“All of you,” Violet continued. “You’re here because you care. You bring a diversity of skills to the fight. You’re firefighters, teachers, permaculturalists, and former members of the Armed Forces. You’re novelists, sculptors, and pianists. You’re plumbers, electricians, and tinkers. You’re anarchism’s pride and joy. You are the movement today and you are the future.  
“I am constantly amazed at how well you all live the anarchist life everyday. You are the tree and the pinecones. You get it. I’m proud to learn from each and every one of you.”  
A woman next to me put her arm around my shoulder, squeezed me for a bit, and then released me.  
“We’ve got the philosophy, we’ve got the momentum on the battlefield, and we’ve got the people. Keep the trust, my friends. Our commitment is our strength. Peace and love. Peace and love.” She stepped down quickly and was immediately lost within the crowd.  
And like that, the assembly dispersed. Anarchists—indeed, people in the flesh—went about their tasks, always with revolution and progress in mind, though prosaic concerns often ruled the day. There were foodstuffs to pack and sort, ammunition and matériel to itemize and store, families to care for, and missions to plan and organize.   
I stood up.   
Some anarchists were lingering and discussing the content of Violet’s speech. “No news to me,” one elderly man in a tattered V-neck sweater said as he limped over to a good buddy.  
I looked around for a bathroom, craving a good scrub.   
A tendril of spices flicked at my nose. The familiar din of a kitchen pierced the dispersing crowd. The clank of cutlery and heckles of competing cooks clattered hard. The peal of my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten in a long time. I followed my nose. It led me to a beaded curtain to my right, after the farthest wooden door.  
I turned to look for Violet as I approached the curtain. She was off to the side along the wall beyond the tree. She was looking right at me. She waved me on, encouraging me to explore. I smiled, waved back a little sheepishly, and walked through the beads.  
I entered a bright yellow room with a conical ceiling. A variety of improvised tables sprouted from the brick floor. Some tables were constructed from milk crates and tired wood. Other tables were just old doors resting across broad chairs. People of all ages nested around three of the tables on the right, leaving a few tables on the left free from humans. An old portrait of a man hung from the right-hand wall. I didn’t recognize him. Jet-black braids rested aside the dark bronze skin of his oval face. He wore a smirk disguising much sadness. I couldn’t determine the man’s age amid the sepia tint. He could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty. I wondered if he was still around. My appraisal of the man took a backseat, as I was overwhelmed with aromas.  
The smells of the main course, already served (some sort of noodle dish, loaded with potatoes) washed me repeatedly between the eyes. Large wooden bowls of the meal dotted the three occupied tables. But the yells—controlled chaos, fun and comical—that came from the far side of the room struck me as the main attraction. Two men, brothers by the look of it, were cooking a meal together. Smiles decked their faces.  
“Vamos a preparar un delicioso postre de limón!”   
“Lata de leche evaporada!” came a yell on a different wavelength.  
“¿Donde esta?!”  
“¿Y las frutas?”  
“Las frutas? Aquí. Mmmmm fresas!”  
“Y la lata de leche condensada?”  
“Paquete de galletas dulces!”  
I decided to take a lap around this kitchen of sorts. Nobody seemed to consider me a stranger. In fact, everyone who made eye contact welcomed me with a smile, a kind word, or a pat on the back.  
“I liked her pace. She always gets me fired up,” said one teenage male. I assumed he was discussing Violet’s speech.  
His friend replied, “That’s cuz you’ve got a crush on her.”   
The teenager blushed.  
An elderly woman with licorice wrinkles at the far end of the table offered me a plate of food. I declined politely. The cooks’ chaos revved back up as I passed in front of the prep area.  
“Poco a poco.”  
“¿Y cuando vamos a empezar, Viejo?”  
“¿Cuántos limones?”  
“Exprima los tres cuartos!”  
“Cabrón!”  
Their energetic pace only added to their cooperation, though it seemed like they were talking over one another. They moved quickly, dividing ingredients as new boxes were placed on their table. They tossed utensils, bunches of fruit, cans, and packets, back and forth, all while yelling like drunken uncles. I liked watching them, but I tried not to stare. I put my head down and eyed the fringe of a well-worn rug at their feet. Soon clear of the cooks’ table, I rounded the far corner and approached the entranceway once more.   
“Agrega la limón lentamente!”  
“Eres me licuadora!”   
They both laughed. The cooks’ joyful words slapped my back.   
¿Cuántas horas?  
¿En el refrigerador?  
“Sí.”  
“…dos horas, mas o menos.”  
Violet met me at the beaded curtain. Her black rucksack was nowhere to be seen.  
“What do you think?”   
“Of what? Your speech or this?”  
“Everything,” she replied.   
“To be honest—”  
“Overwhelmed?” she interrupted. “It happens.”  
“You recruit from the streets often?”   
“Is that what you think you are? A recruit?”   
I didn’t know what to say.  
She shrugged, a silent reply of a dozen words.  
“What is TMG?”   
“TMG, eh?” Violet replied.   
“Yeah.”  
She explained. TMG. The Tactical Machinery Group. Manual mapping of anarchist facilities would be perilous to personnel and equipment alike. An office the size of a small closet, located in the Pentagon’s basement—“G-ring,” as the basement was known—took the lead in tackling this challenge. The project was named the innocuous-sounding Tactical Machinery Group. TMG’s goal? Find and destroy the anarchists’ main sanctuaries. They soon developed software and hardware to test on existing physical structures within oligarch controlled territory. They sent a team, under heavy guard, down to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, for hands-on testing and evaluation. Weeks of trial, error, and on-the-fly tweaks led to tangible improvement in the low-rate initial production software.   
“And they’ve got it operational?” I asked.  
Violet shrugged. “The best we can do is play a strong defense, vary our tactics, and keep the pressure on.”  
I moved my mouth to the side, what I thought might’ve been a cute gesture of resignation.   
“You look tired,” Violet remarked. “Come. I’ll show you a place where you can take a load off.”  
I moved to walk through the curtain so we could head on our way, but she didn’t budge. After I made a few clumsy stutter-steps, she turned me around by my shoulders and nudged me back towards the cooks. I walked toward them, Violet’s hand between my shoulder blades. The cooks’ rumpus died down a bit as we approached. I stopped a few paces in front of their table, my eyes on the food.   
“What may we serve you?” the cook on the left asked. He sported a salt and pepper goatee over a bronze face.   
“Or should we say how may we serve you?” his partner asked. He boasted the same kind face as his peer, but had a look that his baby fat had never quite left him. I caught him mid-blink. As he opened his eyes, a little spark flared and then died down. The kindling hinted at an acute ferocity, forged over time and existing in a controlled smolder. Every time he opened his eyes the kindling would flare. Once engaged, it took a lot of energy for me to look away.  
“I think our friend here is looking to stay the night,” Violet crooned.   
In place of replying, the brothers both bent sideways at the waist in order to see around me. Violet’s cold palm was still on my back. The brothers straightened up after exchanging looks with Violet. I wondered what look she had thrown their way.   
“Very well,” the brothers said in unison, stepping back at the same time. “Right this way.” With the fluidity of a professional fútbol player, the brother with the goatee used the big toe on his right foot to flick up the edge of the rug beneath their feet. With that flick and a dexterous push, he rolled up the rug underneath the sole of his right foot, revealing an ironclad trap door beneath.   
“Grab some chow before you head down,” one of the cooks offered.

I muttered through a mouthful of potatoes as I climbed down the ladder. “Just when you think there are no more secret passageways, the effing chefs are standing on one.” Inside, though, I was pretty impressed with the anarchists’ security. I’d have never thought to place a trap door there, and the men guarding it were certainly formidable foes. I doubted my mumbles were reaching Violet’s ears, since the cooks were already moving onto preparing tomorrow’s breakfast, complete with all of the yelling that such activities entailed.  
“Good, good,” Violet was saying. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”   
My feet hit the ground.   
Violet hung on the last rungs of the ladder. “Yeah, it’s a good location for a trap door. Our security has to be this good; we’re losing a fair amount out there.” Reading my confused look, she clarified. “Sometimes we paint a rosy picture in order to rally the crowd. In this case, I did so in order to achieve a desired effect.”  
“What effect?”  
“You can take your boots off, if you want,” Violet offered as she dismounted from the ladder. I followed her instructions. The cold ground surged through my soles, contrasting sharply with the warm air. “This way,” she said, leading us from the darkness of the anteroom into the living quarters. I entered.   
A colorful jigsaw puzzle of worn carpets coated the cold ground in uneven layers. Tapestries of picturesque scenes—endless fields beneath deep sky, brooks flowing down from snow-capped mountains, and galaxies of all shapes and sizes—covered the walls. Faux windows patched the spaces between tapestries. Wiring, eavesdropping countermeasures, crisscrossed the ceiling and walls like ant tunnels. Potted plants, somehow thriving, rimmed the room. I smelled fresh soil. The good stuff. A rickety table cupped a purple vase in which dead flowers dried out. A freestanding wood stove stood riveted in the center of the room above thick maroon plates. The stove was small, but efficient. Its heat blanket radiated outward several meters, gifting the room the ambiance of an inn found in an old fantasy novel. I walked over and warmed my outstretched hands as I took in the rest of the scenery. Kind faces smiled in my direction. Vents above my head circulated fresh air. Simple benches, visibly repaired several times, rimmed small tables. Rope hammocks hung from the ceiling. Green cots crisscrossed the room.   
I recognized the towering man, the one who looked like a professional wrestler, that I had seen beside the stage earlier during Violet’s speech. The man’s face seemed innocent in the glow of the wood stove. He staggered toward me over a large belly and tired knees.   
“This is Amlaq,” Violet introduced.   
“Hello, Amlaq,” I said. “I’m Byrne.” We embraced. He smelled like soot. He pulled back. His smile grew. His eyes got wetter, like they wanted to cry for joy. I didn’t understand. The towering man nodded, letting go of me.  
“You can put your stuff there,” Violet said. She motioned to a trunk at the foot of an empty cot. “Bathroom and showers are through that door.”  
Amlaq nodded, closed his eyes, and sat back against the wall.   
I craved a strong, cold shower, but I stopped after one step towards the bathroom. “Why am I here?”  
Violet was already sitting on a cot. She took off her boots and looked up at me. A rail-thin woman passed by and patted her on the shoulder. Violet smiled at the woman and looked back at me.   
“Did you hear my speech?” Violet asked me.   
“You’re not answering my question,” I countered.   
“I am.” She picked up an empty boot and began adjusting its laces. “Patience, my friend.”  
“That’s just it. I’m not your friend. You don’t even know me.”  
“What did I say? Reason number three. You. The people. You bring much to the table, even if you doubt yourself.”  
I disliked the way she said ‘people.’  
“So that’s it? Me, a complete stranger, is suddenly allowed in? No tests? No screening?”  
She slowly placed a boot on the floor, and then, with her heels, pushed both boots beneath the cot.   
“Is that what you think we should do? Strap you to a polygraph machine? Grille you on your darkest secrets? And then give you a series of aptitude tests?”  
I looked away, marveling at nothing in particular.   
“We do it a little differently here. I’ve followed you for a while. You seem trustworthy. We gradually expand that trust through requests and deeds. That way, we build a community based on real trust. Not some superficial shit based on a classification, pay grade, and a flag.”  
She had me. I had to admit, I liked their way of doing things. There was a simple logic to it. “So the bathroom’s through there?” I asked.   
She leaned to her left and lifted the heavy lid of an oak chest. With one smooth movement, she plucked a purple towel from the depths of the chest and tossed it at my face.  
“Welcome to our home.”


	3. Chapter 3

MY FIRST NIGHT IN the living quarters of the anarchist harbor was excellent sleep. In the streets I’d have to fend off all sorts of feral animals, feral mercenaries, and homeless folk during any given night’s rest. But down in the anarchist harbor I slept through the night. I woke up with my head draped to the right. The lower side of my mouth was wet. I guessed I had drooled during the night. A crinkly feeling between my eyes indicated that I was getting dehydrated.   
I rustled my quilt out of the way to allow a little light to fall upon the cot. Sure enough, a splotch of drool marked the cot’s green fabric. It wasn’t the end of the world, but I think part of me wanted to make a good impression, so I tucked a corner of the quilt under my elbow in order to soak up any willing drool while I propped myself up in bed. The nearest candle, a beeswax rainbow of fluorescent colors, shuddered kindly. Eyes fully open, I took in the desolate room. One of the hammocks in the corner swung gently. My knapsack lay where I had left it at the foot of my cot. I walked over and rummaged inside for a water bottle. I drank it to the last drop, and the crinkly feeling around my third eye started to dissipate.   
Whispers hit me as I walked towards the anteroom to ascend the ladder.  
“And you’re sure the profile will look authentic?”  
“Their administrators will never know. And the personnel accessing the data will have full faith in its authenticity.”  
“Because it’s in the system?”  
“Because it’s in the system and because of the way it’s presented.”   
“You got this?”  
“We got this.”   
“When can we expect it to be completed?”  
“We’d like to do it immediately after your op at Hew’s Tomb, but we wanted your thoughts first.”  
“I think it’s a great move.” Violet’s voice rang true. “Let’s—”  
The man Violet was speaking to looked up, catching my movement across the outline of the doorway. The man recoiled, put his head down, and bolted up the ladder. He climbed like a frightened squirrel. Aware her privacy had been compromised, Violet spun around. For a moment she looked almost angry in the darkness.   
“What was that all about?” I asked, stepping slowly toward her, my toes pointed inward.  
“Don’t worry about it,” Violet assured.   
“I—”  
“‘I said ‘Don’t worry about it,’” Violet insisted firmly, shuffling me towards the ladder. “I’ll be up in a sec.”  
“Ketchup is not a hotdog topping!” one cook yelled.   
“Well, I like it,” the other cook replied.   
My head poked through the trap door.  
“Oh! Sorry, my friend!” he said as soon as he noticed me. “I almost stepped on you.”  
I stood up and looked around. The man I had seen downstairs with Violet was not among the people present.  
“El vagabundo!” the shorter cook proclaimed as I stretched my hands over my head. I looked up, taking in the broad rafters that ran across the ceiling. They looked like roots.   
I smiled weakly to the cook.  
“Tell him ketchup does not belong on a hotdog,” the taller cook directed.   
I shrugged. “I kind of like ketchup on—”  
“Play nice,” Violet said, coming up into the kitchen. Addressing me, she said, “The cooks’ enthusiasm takes a little getting used to, but they mean only the best.”  
I smiled again.  
“What would you like for breakfast?” Violet asked.  
Gentle classical music began floating around the chamber, but I was unable to pinpoint its source.   
“Do you eat eggs here?” I asked.  
“I don’t, but we have eggs, sure!”   
The first cook nodded. Violet gestured for me to have a seat at one of the tables. She went over to the cooks to make me a plate.   
Drab floor stones cooled my feet. I approached a table. Two elderly women sat at either end. Kids perched along the side benches. I sat down at an open space in the middle of the right side.   
One of the older kids, maybe twelve years old, led off. “Welcome to our home!”  
“Thank you very much,” I replied. I was touched.  
The kids then laid into me, asking me all sorts of questions about my age, background, and hobbies. I tried to answer the best I could. All the while, the elderly women smiled, laughed, and twice offered me what food remained on their plates. I declined politely and told them that I had some food coming.   
“Ah, yes. Violet,” one of the women said knowingly. “Our favorite.”  
The kids then started in on my favorites. What’s your favorite song? What’s your favorite book? Who’s your favorite historical figure? I was taken aback, to say the least. Not only were they precocious for a group of kids, but their manners and the way they carried themselves spoke of a maturity beyond most. The people I had grown up with revolved their lives around endless consumption of vapid pop culture and inane media. If I were a religious man, I would’ve said a silent prayer right there, that these kids would make it through whatever battles were sure to crop up.  
Violet returned with a plate of food. The classical music picked up volume as she set the plate down in front of me.   
“You’re not eating?” I asked, noticing that she had no plate for herself.   
“I already ate,” she said, winking at one of the elderly women. She crossed to the other side of the table and squeezed in on the bench.  
I dove into the food. My stomach longed for the eggs, scones, and yogurt that awaited me.  
“We’ve got big plans for you,” Violet said as I took my first bite.  
I coughed up a fleck of poached egg, causing the kids to giggle as it landed in the middle of the table.   
“Shit. I mean ‘shoot,’” I apologized. Composing myself, I asked, “Does it have anything to do with what I overheard earlier?”  
“Sort of. Not really. Kind of.”  
“Oh,” I said, laughing.  
“I forgot a glass of water. Water’s good?”  
I nodded. “It’s okay, I can get it.”   
“Don’t be silly,” Violet insisted as she got up to retrieve a glass of water from the tap behind the cooks’ table.   
“We have to filter the water through all sorts of devices,” the elderly woman to my right explained. “The Task Force has tried more than once to poison the water supply.”  
“How do you filter poison?” I asked.  
“Very carefully, young man,” she replied with a chortle.   
I laughed too. I began to see that humor was one of the anarchists’ most powerful weapons.   
“Here you go,” Violet said, sitting down again. She placed the glass in front of me. I took an eager gulp.   
“So what was that earlier?” I asked once my thirst was tempered.   
“Didn’t I tell you not to worry about it? You don’t take direction very well.” She smiled. “Maybe that’s what we like about you.”  
I laughed and scarfed a whole poached egg.   
“Plus, we’ve gotta get you ready for your op.”  
“My op?”  
She nodded mischievously.   
“Jesus,” I said. My appetite rapidly departed. The food before me suddenly held the appeal of a pile of hay. I appreciated the anarchists’ hospitality, but I wasn’t among them to pick fights with the oligarchs. I had eluded trouble thus far, and I intended to keep it that way. Their fight wasn’t my fight. I wanted to change the topic. “Who’s the portrait?” I asked, gesturing to the sepia picture hanging high on the wall like a championship banner.   
“Ah, yes,” the kid to the left of me remarked, clinking his utensils.   
“Other anarchists paint him in the most complimentary of lights,” the elder to my right explained, gesturing to the portrait with her spork.   
“We do no such things here,” Violet stated.  
“We recognize he was just as flawed as the rest of us,” the elder noted. “But he was a great man and one of the best anarchists around.”  
“One of the best,” Violet echoed, barely trying to hide her melancholy.   
“What did he do?” I inquired further.  
“He was one of the originals,” Violet said, providing little context.  
“He helped get this place off the ground,” the oldest of the kids informed me.  
“That’s good to know, actually,” I said, trying a little humor.  
“What’s that?” the elder to my left asked, dabbing the corners of her lips with a sapphire handkerchief.  
“Well, I’m hardly a paragon of virtue. It’s good to know that I won’t be judged for terrible choices and all my faults.”  
“You won’t,” Violet assured. “All we ask is that you abide by our all for all principle and that you pull your own weight.”  
“Of that you can be completely certain.”  
“Eat up,” the elderly woman to my right encouraged. “If I know Violet, and I think I do,” she hinted, fluttering her eyebrows in Violet’s direction, “then you’ve got a big day ahead of you.”   
Violet pulled a thick folder out from her waistband. She slid it across the table to me. It was stamped HT along the tab.   
“HT?” I asked.   
“You’ll see,” Violet said.   
The elderly woman to my right cackled.


	4. Chapter 4

MY COLD FEET SLAPPED the granite on the muddy path to the Lake. Patches of brave grass haloed what was left of the stone pathway. The surf poked at bleached driftwood as I descended to the beachfront. I looked out over the water at the distant island, home to my objective, the prison.  
If any eyes were on me, I was just a homeless man, eking out an existence, ready to brave the plunge. My wiry legs cut through the choppy seascape. My toes, already beaten by the callous wind, quickly went numb once submerged in the water. A scrub of hair danced back and forth across my chest daring the wind to pick up. My nose was running. Whitecaps led the way to the island prison, one mile out into the Lake. I sucked up a big gulp of air, pushed off into the surf, and settled in for a pleasant sidestroke. I had my instructions, and I intended to carry them out. I let my mind wander.   
Ah, the benefit of being in the natural world: a release from structured thought. Don’t let anything get in the way of the experience. The experience. The water cooled me. I tried to embrace my own animal essence. Perhaps such time alone would allow my imagination to reunite with the ancient character of the land. My, how we’ve hampered the natural world. Why can’t we let it be? Let it walk its own path? What animals might reintroduce themselves to Chicago once humans learn to live peacefully with other animals? Could wolves return? Would I live to see such a day? Wolves had been hunted to extinction in Illinois in the mid-eighteen hundreds. My leading arm extended as my trailing arm pushed the water against my hip. Wolves and other large animals could help change the ecosystem for the better. I knew it. Human attempts to cull wolves or keep the population in check had caused more destruction than we’d ever know. The land we had ruined was now a mere specter of its old self. Big animals. Bring them back. Help humans reconnect with the land. My hands nearly met in front of my chest. No more tidying up the land. No more monocultures. No more harmful government policies that sacrificed natural processes on the altar of manicured order. Our children could rally too, once engaged with nature. More outdoor entertainment, more surprises. How would the Lake fare? Would its fish stocks rally? Would human-made pollution disperse over time? How long would it take? My trailing arm swept back while my leading arm extended forward. I mulled over the richness of animals that would rally alongside cognizant humans. Stop disturbing the natural world, start respecting ourselves in the process. No more oppression of humans. No more suppression of the natural world. A mutual flourishing could occur. I fantasized about the banks of the Lake and the diversity of species they could hold. Abundance.   
I didn’t know how much time had passed before I decided to look up. The prison, once sparkling atop a rocky blip on the horizon, had become a smear, and the smear grew into a gravely gash. I mulled over its construction to pass the time.  
Combined Joint Task Force Chicago Cook County had called in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, USACE, to help build the island in six months. USACE did it in eight. Well, actually, USACE subcontracted the work to a dozen private construction firms, all long-time Pentagon favorites. They went over-budget by a cool hundred and twenty million dollars, but nobody complained. At least, no citizen complaint ever reached the desk of anyone in the Pentagon holding a pay grade higher than O-6. USACE and their fold of contractors had worked day and night on the land reclamation project. Non-stop, they dumped sand, earth, and gravel on the site the Task Force had selected. Over five hundred ‘reclaimed’ acres were created during what remained of the fiscal year. Suction-dredgers, barges, and excavators gaggled to and from Gary, Indiana, ports. Gary was generally safer and easier to patrol than the unruly Chicago waterfront, though I had heard that USACE contractors were subject to sniper fire and improvised explosive devices, especially during the first month of the project. Soon, the Task Force added U.S. Coast Guard cutters and PT boats—pitched to them at regional arms fairs—to their regular patrols. Surely other subtle measures were also taken, and the sniping died down to a weekly pot shot.   
The island was a public relations success for the Task Force and the war industry in general. The major corporate conglomerate in charge of the land reclamation effort had issued a code of conduct three months into the project. All of the subcontractors and corporate stakeholders signed the pledge. This pleased corporate newscasters. Their acclaim dominated two full twenty-four hour news cycles. Persistent rumors of slave labor, forced marches, and conscription of the indigent went uninvestigated.  
SLOSH! A large wave socked me in the jaw, immediately water-logging my right ear. I stopped to tread water when I realized it was no lone wave. The wake of a suction-dredger roiled another swell towards my face. The massive machine was capable of displacing 7,000 cubic yards per hour. In my focused state I had completely tuned out my environment, as I had done years ago during military training. No spring chicken, I thrashed about, catching sight of the massive machine’s port side. I couldn’t even see the deck. Then I realized it didn’t have a deck; a small crew and straightforward automation were all it took to operate the beast. I dunked myself and swam beneath the surface, southeast, away from the mighty wake. The top of my head, which I had managed to keep relatively dry, was now a sopping mat. I embraced the situation and confidently conquered the frozen shock, but I couldn’t keep up the pace. I soon began to falter. At first it came to me in erred strokes; my usual pull-push turned into more of a flail. My lead arm took its time and rarely synced up with the bend of my trailing arm. Then my feet began to crack into each other at the bottom of my scissor kick. My trailing arm and top leg no longer worked in concert. I swallowed more and more water. I was going to be late for the prisoner escape.  
Cold, exhausted, and suddenly aware of the lunacy of my mission—Was Violet testing my commitment or was she sending me on a suicide mission?—I slowed down and resigned to take whatever came my way. With this peculiar peace of mind, I looked up, gasped hard, and turned to a breaststroke, bobbing towards the shores of the island prison.  
Its official title was Temporary Detention Site Lima Seven, but most people called it Hew’s Tomb, after the first anarchist who was executed there. (Even the oligarchs used this nickname, proudly, when referring to the prison.) Within a month of his arrival, Goiás Hew had been tried and sentenced to death, the military tribunal making an example out of him. The underground press snarled with condemnation. Corporate media applauded.  
Weaponry of varying caliber aimed out from the island toward the sea: a light portable rocket system; pillboxes lined with 105mm recoilless rifles; several 122mm howitzers facing north; M240 machine guns just east of the docks, linked into remotely operated weapon systems; and a RIM-7 surface-to-air missile battery, modified for shore defense. It was all there, just like the anarchist file had said.  
Four contiguous facilities boiled up from the island’s southernmost hill. The thickest of all housed the prisoners. Its concrete foundation blended into barren ground; the first row of barred windows started several spans above the tallest human. Thick, whitewashed walls menaced the shoreline below. Despite its imposing size, the prison was rumored to contain only a small population of inmates, mostly revolutionaries from Cook County. As it set the standard for discipline and efficiency, the Tomb often received a few transfers from east coast prisons.   
Word leaked out. A sympathetic guard, perhaps, letting the truth slip in passing to a like mind along 57th Avenue: torture was commonplace; solitary confinement the norm; and malnutrition killed as frequently as the cold. A prisoner in Alcatraz, the erstwhile penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, had four rights: the right to shelter, food, clothing, and medicine. Well, a prisoner in Hew’s Tomb had three rights: the right to a beating, breakfast, and a blanket. Everything else was earned. The more you kowtowed or snitched, the more pleasant your stay would be. Though, if a prisoner’s information was found to be continually unreliable, the prisoner risked losing all his or her privileges. In the crack of a baton, one could go from relative comfort to brutal misery; from a down comforter, a modest supper, and a favorite novel to searing lights over a cold floor. Two prisoners had attempted daring escapes. Both were shot in the back long before reaching the water. These thoughts were little comfort as I bobbed in the littoral.   
A giant meathook gripped my neck like a wrangler rescuing a sodden puppy. The face of the giant man, Amlaq, quickly shocked me out of the menace of self-defeat. Amlaq placed me on the dock, his body towering kindly between my blinks. I heard him jog away. I coughed and sputtered like a Paxman Valenta submarine engine.  
Distant small arms fire and the wail of an alarm forced me to my feet. A submersible bubbled to the surface next to the dock as I stood up. The craft nudged the pier with the finesse of a seasoned dockhand. Violet’s head popped through the hatch, a thick rope between her teeth. The hatch, an X pattern across its steel, clanked shut behind her as she scampered over the fiberglass skin towards the dock. Wood scraped Violet’s hip as she scrambled up, cleating the rope as soon as all four limbs had touched the dock.  
Dazed, I walked over to Violet.  
She breezed right past me.   
I looked right, the direction of her sprint. Bala, one of the oligarchy’s most prized prisoners, was racing down the hill. She wore a bright red jumpsuit. Her bare feet found sure footfalls, as if she had meticulously mapped out each step during her sixteen-month imprisonment. Amlaq was shooting at the guard towers. Bala reached the dock, embraced Violet in the blink of an eye, and together they ran back to the submersible. Violet started loosening her cleat as—  
CRRRR-TWUMP! A caustic blue mushroom roared into the air behind the main prison facility. A natural gas storage tank lay shattered, popped, its shrapnel embedded in the nearest façades. Even from a distance I felt the heat on my face. I was somewhat surprised I had even heard the explosion. In the explosions I had experienced previously, I rarely heard the blast. But I always felt the heat.   
Breathing like an asthmatic rhino, Amlaq barreled back down the docks. The planks bowed beneath each step.   
“Time to go?” Bala asked casually, respecting and feeling out Violet’s command.  
Violet nodded. The blue cloud fluffed silently behind us.  
Amlaq stated, “I stay.”   
A lone bullet snapped past my ear. A cold spring zephyr coming off the water burned my salty cheeks.   
Amlaq turned once more toward the gunfire. Violet roared in anger, trying to pull him towards the submersible but Amlaq flicked her away with mighty precision.   
“Come on! He’s made up his mind!” I yelled, realizing the man was intent on heading back into the fight.  
“Jump here,” Violet instructed, pointing to the dark duct tape crossing the hatch.  
I hopped down onto the submersible. It supported my weight well, bobbing only a bit. Bala followed, landing like a cat and quickly slinking out of the way.  
“Let’s move!” I yelled. The lip of the recently renovated dock wouldn’t shield our craft well from direct fire.  
Violet opened the latch and guided us down into the main compartment. Most of the hollow was empty, save for a simple conning tower in the middle of the submersible and tubes venting air at either end of the craft.  
“Stay by that crank in case we need to scuttle it,” Violet yelled hoarsely as she bear-crawled to the back of the craft.   
Bala stowed the rope. Violet began fiddling with the engine, which soon roared to life. Sputtered, actually. But it was a mean sputter. We were quickly under way.   
Violet checked a compass, dangling from a length of parachute cord around her neck, and set her bearing, clipping the rudder in the proper direction.  
The muted sound of gunfire and explosions seemed a galaxy away.  
The descent was uneventful. We coasted in the fiberglass craft to a few meters under the surface of the water, though to my ears we could have been leagues deep. I was just glad I didn’t have to swim again.   
I sat down with a sigh. Cross-legged in the middle of the ship, I leaned back against the rough starboard interior. I trembled, shaken and exhausted from the day’s events. I put on a face, one that an intimate might read as anger from having been a burden to the operation. I sniffed and coughed, perhaps disguising frightened tears. I didn’t have to work too hard; the engine’s sputter echoed loudly in our hollow.   
Bala sat with her back against the port side. Violet crouched beside her.  
The simple kitchen fan that helped circulate the air whirred sweet nothings into our ears. The waters lapped against the ventilation pipes.  
Silence enveloped our voyage. Each of us three passengers conveyed a pensive look. Each passenger owning his or her past, figuring out how to keep inner demons in check while fighting the good fight.   
Bala rubbed her forearm.   
“Are you okay?” Violet asked, breaching the hush.   
Bala rolled up her sleeve to expose the unmistakable divots of cigarette burns.   
“They tortured me every night for the first couple of weeks.”   
Her casual delivery cast a chill upon my hackles.   
“Did they get anything out of you?” I asked, getting a good look at Bala for the first time. Her shiny black hair roamed her shoulders and down her back. Her flat bangs drooped into her face. Fitting concealment, I mused. She had thin lips and a crooked, endearing smile. Her cheeks were puffy and flushed. Her look, a thousand-mile stare, was known to drive fear into her enemies. I could see why.   
Violet scolded me for such a brash question. “We’re not even home yet, and you’re already asking these questions?”   
I frowned, showing many emotions were welling inside of me, none bursting out. I looked at the hull. I wondered how deep it was to the bottom of the Lake.  
“What will happen to the other prisoners?” Bala asked randomly.   
“I imagine they’ve overwhelmed what’s left of the guards,” Violet replied softly.   
I pursed my lips and swished them side to side as I thought of Amlaq. What would become of him? I pictured him swimming bravely. I shook my head, dampening the rough fiberglass with a few beads of water. Thinking a little blood flow would do me good, I crawled to the stern and rolled into a cramped rack that abutted the engine.   
“Be careful not to touch anything,” Violet cautioned, her lips a tight porthole.  
I nodded.   
The rack’s thick weave smelled like bananas and grease. The hand-cranked ballast system hugged the opposite wall. The engine sputtered. Powered by kitchen grease, I noted. Someone had written MISTER FUSION on it in black marker, a nod to a classic. I would have laughed, but claustrophobia was grabbing hold. I closed my eyes and tried to picture a vast open field. It helped a little. I listened to my companions talk.  
“… this design from a DHS official who came over to our side a couple years back. He was a wealth of information,” Bala was saying.  
“Is he still with us?” Violet asked.  
“No,” Bala replied.   
The engine shuddered a bit amid a strong current, but soon stabilized and whirred its usual whirr.   
“He was great though,” Bala said, audibly perking up. “He explained a decent amount to us in the early going.”  
“Like?”  
“Eh, like how the Kill Chain developed in the War of Terror was eventually brought home to the U.S. and used to target us, the people.”  
Violet cleared her throat.  
I opened my eyes and turned my head.  
“He once worked at a high-tech command center run out of the U.S. Embassy complex in Kabul,” Bala explained, adjusting her legs, sticking them out in front of her. The film of water that covered the bottom of the submersible wet her clothes. “There, they sifted and analyzed information about the Afghan populace and then coordinated responses across multiple agencies and departments, including DHS, SOCOM, and DEA.” Bala used the acronym for Special Operations Command and the initialism for the Drug Enforcement Agency.  
Violet nodded, eager, as was her way, to pick up any bit of information she didn’t know.  
“They offer us opportunities: their giant bureaucracies, their long supply chains, their absurd traditions,” Bala said. “Opportunities for all.”  
“Traditions?”  
“For example, the dude—the DHS official—when he was stateside, he worked with a drug interdiction task force down in Key West. They’d raise a goofy flag in courtyard whenever their intel helped lead to a drug seizure.”  
“What was on the flag?” I chimed in.  
Bala laughed. “I don’t know if he was making this up or not, but he said it was a flake of cocaine with a red X over it.”  
Violet offered up a chuckle, though her face told me her thoughts resided elsewhere.  
Bala continued laughing until communications gear next to the conning tower started to crackle. Violet scooted over to monitor the radio traffic. A few moments of concern soon washed from her face. She smiled, turned a small black knob counterclockwise, and scooted back to Bala’s side.  
“Do you know some of the materials used to build this submersible were salvaged from dumpsters at Task Force construction sites?” Violet asked me.  
I shook my head. “How far down are we?” I asked.  
She looked at me blankly as she crawled past me. No verbal response was forthcoming.  
“So what does a lame flag in a courtyard have anything to do with exploitable traditions?” I asked.  
“That, my friend, is for us to figure out,” Violet stated.  
“Have you ever been caught? On these journeys, I mean.” I was curious.  
“You think Am—” She shook her head. “It’s cat and mouse all the way.”  
“I see.”  
“We adjust. They adjust.” She stared at the engine. “We’ve got the leg up for the time being, cause they don’t know about these submersibles yet.”   
“They do now, presumably,” I said.  
“Hmm,” came Violet’s terse reply.   
THWUMP! Our craft shuddered and my ears popped. I coiled, one arm gripping my knees into my chest, one arm bracing myself against the rack.   
Violet sprang into action and immediately revved the engine. A wave of nausea told me we were surfacing quickly.   
“Depth charges!” she yelled.   
Our submersible punched out of the water and settled amid the surf.  
“This is the Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County Maritime Domain Awareness Branch. Stop your vessel or we will be forced to open fire!”   
“You already did, you dicks,” Violet said with a smile.   
“That’s a mouthful,” I jested, my words too soft for anyone to notice. “Their task force title, I mean.”  
“What can I do?” Bala offered, her face scrunched and hawkish.   
“Stay put,” Violet said with a wink.   
She crawled over to me. She pried my hand off the corner of my rack. “I’m going to need your help.” In one sweeping movement she grabbed a smooth black case from underneath the rack and lugged it fore, shoving me towards the bow.  
CRACK! TWWWUMP!  
Violet and I settled below the hatch as the second depth charge exploded. Closer, this time.   
“Monitor the engine. Yank the red handle HARD when I tell you,” Violet directed Bala.  
“Okay!” Bala yelled, already headed aft.   
“We’re not going up there, are we?” I asked.   
Rocking a toothy grin, Violet nodded. “You bet your boney ass.”  
Violet popped open the black case, revealing two pieces of a stubby shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile. She grabbed the separate pieces, allowing the case to drop to the floor, and fit the pieces together, then transferring the weapon to her left hand. With her right, Violet unlatched both interior locks on the submersible’s hatch. In the blink of an eye she leapt through the hatch. I looked up.  
An MH-60R multi-mission helicopter circled the dark skies like a shark. An automatic cannon jeered us from beneath the aircraft’s belly. A P-8 anti-submarine airplane roamed at higher altitude, taking in the scene.  
“Hold my feet!” Violet yelled.   
I did my best to steady Violet against the lake’s sway. She fired the missile. The backblast cut my ears. The burn rushed into my nose.   
“Courtesy of NATO!” Violet screamed.  
The helicopter banked sharply to the south, dispensing five sets of flares from its underbelly. The flares shimmered beautifully. Their glow lit up Lake Michigan like party boats of yore. Though Violet’s missile sailed wide, both the P-8 and the MH-60R departed with haste.  
“Poseidon, my ass,” Violet said, before catching herself. “No gloating yet.”   
She ducked back into the submersible and scampered aft and recalibrated the submersible’s depth and heading. “Change of plans,” she muttered.

“Who made this thing?” I asked, rapping my knuckles on the rough inside of the submersible. We were back below the surface. I strained to hear the downwash of any helicopters through the pressure—three pounds per square inch—of water above. But I couldn’t distinguish anything.  
“I can’t tell you that.” Violet cracked her neck. “I don’t know much about it, but what I do know I can’t tell you.”   
I nodded contentedly. I respected the anarchists’ strict principles of operational security. I tugged at my right earlobe, still coping with the surface-to-air missile’s deafening roar.   
“Can you say how long it takes to make one?”  
“Depends on the size and the function. Do you think all of these gems operate in the Lake?” She raised a rhetorical eyebrow in my direction. “On average, about four months.” She smiled.   
I had never seen her smile before. Not like this, anyway. Her smile projected calm. My spine shuddered from the knot at the base of my neck to the middle of my thoracic nerves. It felt really good.  
We spent the rest of the slow chug home in silence. Even the engine seemed quieter. My heart’s pounding stilled. We turned north and skirted the coast for a bit. Violet surfaced the submersible just when I didn’t think I could take the cramped silence anymore. She quickly killed the engine and took a piece of it with her before stowing the case that had contained the shoulder-launched missile.  
“Excuse me,” she said, passing me on her way to opening the hatch.   
She ascended through the square hole. I heard her tinkering above. A rope slapped the side of our craft. Moments later she stuck her head back down the hatch, telling me it was all clear. I ascended slowly. One of my belt loops got stuck on the metal clasp that secured the hatch from the inside. She helped me untangle it.   
“You first,” she ordered.   
I swung my feet over the side and scooted down into the cold water. My damp body happily soaked up water once more. The water ran deep, perfect for the occasion. I gulped a little water before steadying myself. Violet followed me, splashing quietly and submerging gracefully.   
I looked around as I followed her to shore. It was an eerie part of the shore I had never seen before. Route 41 ran right over the cove where Violet had tied up our craft. I wondered if the anarchists had modified the area at all, or if they had just scouted the best spot. Either way, my hat went off to them. We swam to a ghostly grove rimmed with quiet birch trees, each tree giving the impression that it could collapse into the water at the next stiff breeze. A crooked IDOT sign clung tenuously to a chain-linked fence that weaved in and out of the trees. Part of an old slogan—Transform Transpo—gained a little more rust under a flickering streetlight in the time it took us to dismount, tie off our craft, and compose ourselves. A haggard coyote leaned against a nearby dune. She eyed us as we climbed up a concrete embankment. She scampered away as soon as the first of us crossed under the chain-linked fence.  
“We need to get underground,” Violet asserted, huddling beneath the overpass. “Our encounter with their aircraft caused us to miss our exit window.” Violet eyed Bala’s bright prison garb.  
“We could hit up that storm drain, n’ see where it goes,” Bala suggested.  
“No, we checked it last week during the final prep for this operation. It surfaces in a part of town we really, really don’t want to be in.”   
“Hoof it?” I asked. “We hoof it?”  
“Let me th—No!” Violet proclaimed. “Wait here.” She darted back down the way we came.  
The void she left behind was slightly awkward. Bala didn’t know me from a hole in the wall, and, to be honest, she was a bit intimidating. I spoke to ease my worry.  
“What do you think she’s up to?”  
“She’s probably getting on the communications equipment I saw inside the submersible. Probably implementing a backup plan of sorts.”  
“Mmmmm,” I concurred. My eyes followed Violet. Just as Bala said, Violet hopped onto the submersible—now well covered with reeds and debris—and soon disappeared inside.  
Bala spoke freely. “I don’t see how we got away. The missile just scared them away? I don’t get it. One missile scared the big bad Task Force away? It doesn’t make sense.”  
“Hmm,” I replied.   
Bala’s eyes stared at a tear in her pant leg. Her eyes flitted back and forth like she was reading. “Or… Or…” Her thoughts soon gained traction and she began to speak rapidly. “Or our craft really was difficult to locate. The passive sonar they use on the P-8 might have a hard time finding the soft purr of the grease motor we had onboard. Couple that with our minimal radar signature above the surface, and you’ve got yourself a pretty evasive little machine.”  
I thought about it. Her logic made sense. I took her reasoning one step further. “Could we also say they got lucky?”  
“How?”  
“With the depth charges.”  
“I just think they didn’t know exactly where we were,” Bala stated. “I’m saying I think they bluffed and we didn’t call them on it.”  
“Maybe.”  
“You don’t seem convinced.”  
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Sometimes we never know.” I wondered how Bala took that line.  
“What other options are there?” Bala asked.  
“I think—well, with my experience on the streets at least—that we might have pried a little advantage from their red tape.”  
“How so?” Bala asked. She then gestured with her chin, which I followed to the sub. Violet had emerged.   
“They’re a bureaucracy,” I said. “A bureaucracy with rules of engagement and a lot of high-tech stuff they don’t want to lose, for fear of bureaucratic reprisal or an anarchist victory.”  
“You know… That makes sense. It might even be simpler than that. It might be that they needed permission from higher leadership, and, when they didn’t get it, they didn’t return.”  
“Yeah, well next time we won’t be so lucky,” I asserted pessimistically. “Either way, I’d like to think you were right the first time, that all of their expensive weaponry and state-of-the-art gear was no match for our inexpensive submersible.”  
Bala chuckled as Violet returned. Violet wasn’t even breathing hard, but her eyes were swollen red with fatigue.   
“We can’t extract by sea. They’ve stepped up patrols. There are at least eight NCPVs in this grid zone alone,” Violet explained, using the acronym for Near Coastal Patrol Vessel, the prizefighter of the Task Force’s maritime assets.  
“So…”  
“So, we wait,” Violet ordered. She scooted up the concrete embankment a bit and came to rest on her heels. We followed her lead.  
“This is dangerous,” I dissented in a whisper. “They’re motivated.”  
Violet ignored me. “What was the political motivation behind London writing Call of the Wild?” Violet asked as we settled into our position. I watched west, Bala watched east, and Violet scanned south.  
“Huh?” I had heard her words, but it took a while for them to process.   
“What were—”  
“I heard you,” I interrupted. “I don’t know.”  
Bala gave her two cents: “Solid read.” She then started stretching her thighs and rear, all without moving beyond her small bubble.  
“C’mon,” Violet encouraged. “Teach me.”  
“The gold rush,” I said slowly.   
“San Francisco? Oh no, that’s right. You said Canada, yeah?”  
“Tens of thousands of people, speculators and adventurers, headed to northwest Canada in search of gold.”  
“How many struck it big?”  
“I’d argue none. The few who got gold and subsequent material wealth were probably never truly content.”  
“You’re judging people who lived over a century ago, hundreds of miles away,” Violet observed.  
“I guess I am,” I answered. “But yeah, a few grabbed a lot of gold… to answer your question.”  
“Has Call of the Wild been translated into many languages?” Violet asked.   
“What are we waiting for?” I inquired.  
“Patience,” Violet stated. She tucked her compass into her shirt.   
“We’re waiting for patience,” Bala soothed, laughing to herself.  
“I wonder what appeal Call of the Wild would have in other countries. I wonder if other nations have similar experiences to the Yukon gold rush.”   
I had to admit, Violet’s enthusiasm warmed me like a hot soup.  
Bala started humming a riff. She then sang softly. “I wonder, will this hatred ever end?”  
“There’s much in the book,” I said authoritatively. “Much we can learn from.”  
“It’s a quick read,” Bala noted.  
“Are you a Hemingway fan?” Violet asked. Before she finished her thought, she instructed, “Let’s scoot up.”   
Bala and I responded by shimmying farther up the concrete embankment, so we were completely covered by the overpass.   
“Better,” Violet said.  
“When post-petroleum humans come up with an environmentally-friendly means of air travel, I want to visit France,” Bala droned. “You ever visit France?”  
Violet and I shook our heads.   
“Read some Hemingway. He wrote a bit on France.”  
“Read him when visiting Spain,” I offered.  
“Read Spanish authors when visiting Spain,” Violet amended.  
“I mean, to get an expat perspective. Not to override local viewpoints.”  
“Understood,” Violet said plainly. She checked her watch.  
“Read Michel de Montaigne when heading to France,” I suggested. “But what do I know?”  
Bala nodded, though I wasn’t sure if my words reached her inner thoughts.  
“Machiavelli in Italy,” Violet submitted.   
“We live in Machiavellian times, that’s for sure,” Bala noted. “I’ll probably lay off Machiavelli after all this shit is over with.”   
I laughed. Flattering laughter. I wanted Bala to like me and appreciate my presence, as I appreciated Violet’s presence.  
I looked up. The familiar silhouette of a Task Force SUV ripped into my eyes right before a spotlight froze us to the ground. I hadn’t even heard the vehicle approach. I gathered my feet under me to scramble, but Violet put a restraining hand on my shoulder. Bala looked at her intensely.   
“You three!” The mechanized voice echoed around our concrete jungle.   
My heart kicked at my ribs. This was it. Great planning, solid execution, and decent escape—all for naught.   
The rear right passenger door of the SUV opened to reveal a spacious interior covered in a plastic film. It reminded me of butcher’s paper.  
Violet winked at me and slid down the embankment towards the open door.   
I shook my head violently, more of an attempt to make sense of the situation than to disagree with her order.  
Bala followed Violet, skidded to a stop halfway down, and yelled back at me. “C’mon, guy!”   
I gathered what little courage I had remaining and followed my anarchist friends.


	5. Chapter 5

“MY NAME’S BYRNE,” I told Bala as I hopped into the back seat and scrunched in next to them.   
“My apologies. Byrne it is,” Bala said.   
I looked into the front seat. From my angle I could make out only a few distinguishing features of the driver: scarred right cheek, scruffy black beard, and a sharp nose. He wore black tactical glasses and a black parka, both standard issue in the Task Force kit.  
It clicked. “This vehicle’ll get us through the checkpoints.”  
“Bingo,” Violet confirmed.   
The driver ripped a patch and we were on our way.   
“We only have two of these, and we only use them for true emergencies,” Violet told me.  
“It’s a shame we’re using it on us,” Bala pricked sharply.   
The ride home progressed in a cold silence.  
I was so exhausted that I missed the final rung on the ladder down to the living quarters. I landed hard on my right foot and rolled my ankle. I limped lightly to my cot; the ankle was tender, but fortunately not sprained or broken. I had just enough energy to flop onto my cot and angle my waterlogged ear downward before falling asleep. I slept like a baby again. I am not a snorer, but I very well might’ve snored that night. Such was my exhaustion.   
The next morning sprinted towards me fast. Once again, all of the cots and hammocks were empty by the time I sat up and de-sleeped my eyes. I climbed up to the kitchen. Two teenagers were reading to each other in the corner. They didn’t look up. I walked out to the bigger chamber where Violet had given her speech and looked around. I walked to the mighty tree. Nobody was in sight. All the doors were shut. I decided to give the main hall a try. The guards were there, like usual, and they were as taciturn as ever. I passed through the behemoths. Did they ever sleep? I walked over to the bulletin board, about halfway down the hallway on the left. Being in the hallway all by my lonesome was actually relaxing. The candles, evenly spaced, burned slowly and welcomingly.   
Tacked to the bulletin board, a crisp article from today’s paper greeted me—not yet cut up, its bullshit not yet highlighted.

A shoeless child roams beyond the outermost fence around Midway International Airport. He walks up to U.S. Navy corpsman David Michaels, who is on patrol around the interior of the fence. The child points to the petty officer’s boots and then to his own bare feet. The petty officer waves to the young boy and continues on his patrol.

The following day, Petty Officer Michaels brings with him a new pair of sneakers and two pairs of crisp white socks. Michaels tosses the bundled gifts over the fence. The boy smiles and puts his hand up on the chain links. Michaels is unable to return the gesture, given his adherence to strict rules regarding base security, but tears are visible on both sides of the fence.

“That kind of connection cannot be explained,” Michaels tells the Chicago Globe Herald. “In many ways, we’re miles apart. But in many ways we’re all brothers.”

Michaels is no stranger to charity. In his free time, he volunteers with the philanthropic branch of the Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County. The branch, known as the Shared National Operation for Welfare, aims to serve unfortunate and underprivileged citizens throughout the Midwest. Humanitarian aid and educational initiatives have long been integral to the Pentagon’s benevolence overseas. Now, CJTF-CCC shows that the Homeland is no exception. 

“Another outstanding aspect of the Task Force is the religious opportunity it provides us,” Michaels explains. Every third Sunday, members of the Task Force are allowed to go outside the wire of their respective installations and interact with local religious leaders, across all faiths. “This kind of engagement fosters security and peace, so that one day we may all live together in harmony.”

I scanned the rest of the articles on the bulletin board. “No mention of our rescue at Hew’s Tomb,” I observed. “Well played.”  
A door slammed inside the chamber, so I walked over to find the person making the noise. The guards clammed up as I approached. The echo of another door closing ricocheted behind them. Only by invoking Violet’s name was I begrudgingly allowed through. The chamber was still empty. I returned to the living quarters to check my knapsack, grab a quick bucket shower, and change my underwear. I disrobed and headed to the showers. The water was frigid and refreshing. I emerged back into the living quarters.   
“Hello.”   
I stumbled in my bare feet, my towel cinched well around my waist.   
“You scared me, Bala.”  
“You slept right through breakfast,” she said, barely hiding her derision.  
“I brought you some leftovers,” Violet said quickly, giving Bala a corrective look. Violet was on her cot. She gestured to a glass container on the cot next to her. The hot meal inside—eggs, by the look of it—steamed up the glass.  
“Where is everybody?” I asked.  
“Autonomous operations,” Bala responded coolly.   
“How’re you feeling about yesterday?” Violet asked, standing up.  
“I feel good. I—” I didn’t know what to say. I was impressed with the anarchists’ daring. I was exhausted from the role I had played in the rescue. To top it all off, I was confused. Why did I have to swim to the island when Violet was able to travel by submersible? They were testing my commitment, I determined; I wondered what else they had in store for me.   
“C’mon,” Violet encouraged, grabbing my arm. “You’ve got training.”  
“What’s today?”  
“Wednesday. Short gun day!”

Every anarchist had to be proficient with short guns: pistols, light submachine guns, and shotguns. Every one had to be proficient with sniper rifles, too. We called those weapons long guns. Most anarchists I met hated guns, but their hatred engendered a cautious respect for all firearms, and that made them world-class students on the range.   
The range was a walled off stretch of underground subway track. My instructor, a soft-spoken, patient man, told me it was once used as a place for on-the-fly repairs. Kind of like a pit stop, he said. Broad cobblestones, wall to wall, hugged lopsided train tracks right down the center of the range. A rusty shell of a railcar silhouetted the far wall downrange. Vents deep in the ceiling above pumped fresh air in and zipped lead air out.   
I liked the range because it helped me practice shooting in all sorts of conditions. High light, low light, dark, heat and cold, uneven footholds, a variety of distances, the range had it all. Each day also offered a different atmosphere depending on the underground thermal vents and how well the generators were running. We took what the range gave us in stride and embraced the difficulty as a challenge.   
My first training session lasted hours. The whole session was dedicated to the M1911 pistol. The gun was powerful and concealable, kind of like an anarchist. The first hour was dedicated to traditional shooting. Point, control breath, finalize aim, and shoot. It felt good to shoot again. I was soon shooting competently at five, ten, and twenty yards. I welcomed the first break, a lone minute to chug some water and collect myself.   
As my first break ended, the instructor dabbed my forehead and made me blow my nose in a spare handkerchief. I felt like I was being coddled. He then walked me through the process of instinctive shooting. In close quarter battle, there was no time to point and shoot, let alone control your breath while staring at the front sight. When shooting instinctively, we watched the target not the sights. We didn’t have time to squeeze a trigger smoothly or keep an ear on our pulse, so we smacked the trigger instead. It was awkward at first. I nearly fumbled the gun, though anything close to an accidental discharge would have surely sent me back to the streets holding nothing but my jock.  
We shot instinctively for the rest of the session. “You’re doing well. Better than most,” the instructor complimented. Time flew. The instructor soon waved a blue flag and put a kind hand on my shoulder to let me know the session was done.  
I massaged my hand as I walked upstairs, excited to see what everyone else was up to and maybe meet a few more people. Everyone I had met so far was nice and very generous, but I got the feeling that they kept me at a distance. I didn’t blame them. After all, I was a new face. I wondered how long until new faces were let into the inner sanctum. I hoped one day to be a part of the decision-making process—what targets to hit, what intel collection to focus on, and what resources to gather.  
Shrill laughter pierced through the column as I descended the ladder, passed through the anteroom, and stepped into the living quarters.   
A blurry ball, two people, bowled around the room, bumping into the chests and cots. I caught a still of Violet’s face, laughing, tumbling over her friend. The two rolled around on the dusty carpet like a cartoon Tasmanian devil scrapping with a pixelated hedgehog. Trying to tickle one another, they gasped for breaths and expelled sharp glee. The physical exertion and the non-stop laughing refreshed them and they embraced it. They were alive in the moment and proud of it.   
I watched from the couch with a big smile on my face. It dropped like a curtain as I saw a shadow move in the corner. Nobody in the living room had heard her enter. I coughed a little, but my alert didn’t penetrate the women’s ball of jollity.   
Bala stepped forward. “Is this how we’re going to overthrow the oligarchy?” she asked softly. The shadows still coated the backside of her ratty, white t-shirt.  
Violet and her friend skidded to a yelping halt. Frozen mid-grapple, neither friend offered any idea how to proceed.   
“I was just down in the armory,” Bala spat. “We’re running very low on flares and flak jackets. The water filters upstairs need cleaning, too.”  
Violet removed her hand from her friend’s ribcage. “Bala, a pleasant surprise,” she stated flatly.   
“You look good all cleaned up,” Violet’s friend said from her back. She took advantage of Violet’s dropped guard to sneak in one final tickle.   
Violet didn’t react. She didn’t even break her eyes from Bala’s stare.   
I crawled off the couch and offered my hand. Violet declined politely, though Violet’s friend accepted with a smile and I helped her to her feet. Violet rose with grace.   
“I’d like to speak with Violet alone.” This was not a request. Violet’s friend scampered away. What remained of the mirth she had ginned up with Violet exited the room with her. I took the long way around the furniture and exited into the anteroom. I closed the heavy door, which had been propped open. As the door closed, I tossed Violet a supportive look. The door shut quietly and I listened from the other side.  
“What’s the—”  
“Are you committed to the cause?” Bala asked. I pictured her emerging fully from the shadows.   
“Why do you insult me?” Violet replied.   
“Answer the question,” Bala demanded.   
I kneeled down and found a gap in the old wood to peek through. Bala walked forth and encroached on Violet’s bubble.   
Nose to nose, Violet stepped backward, a tactical retreat.  
“First of all, I answer to nobody. Or have you forgotten what anarchism is all about?”  
The reply caught Bala unprepared. Violet had a point. And she knew it.  
“In your absence we’ve increased our ranks, we’ve captured a key port, we made it through the winter with minimal losses, and we’ve had some other damn fine successes I’m not even about to discuss. So while we appreciate your sacrifice, and god knows none of us have gone through your ordeal, we don’t—”  
“You speak for the others?” Bala asked.   
“Give me a god damn break,” Violet stated, tacking to a new defensive pose. “You know, this is exactly what the oligarchs want. For decades and decades the ruling class in this country, through their media and intelligence organizations, have used the old divide and conquer technique when oppressing progressive or liberation movements inside these borders.” Violet was stomping around the room now. “So by coming in here, mouth blazing, and picking fights, you’re helping out our sworn enemy. How does it feel?”   
“I’m not—”  
“How does it feel to be helping Hauser?!” Violet screamed, unglued.   
“Oh don’t you DARE!”   
They didn’t acknowledge me as I reentered the living quarters. They were standing nose to nose.   
I hesitated. “Who’s Hauser?” I asked.   
Bala’s flat bangs scraped Violet’s forehead. Her puffy cheeks raged scarlet. Violet’s jet-black boots ground the carpet, as if preparing for launch.  
“Who’s Hauser?” I asked again.  
Their seething cacophony dropped into silence.  
Silence.   
I looked at Violet, who peeled her stare away from Bala.   
Bala closed her eyes and began chewing the air like an imaginary piece of gum.  
“C’mon, guys. Who’s Hauser?”  
Silence. They just stared right through me.  
“This isn’t some Keyser Söse shit,” I said, pretty steamed at the silent treatment.  
“You don’t know? Bullshit,” Violet argued.  
I shook my head. “No bullshit.”   
“You’ve been on the streets too long.”   
I shrugged.   
Violet chuckled. “Okay.” Her chuckle massaged a little levity into the living quarters.  
Bala swallowed her imaginary gum and stepped back into the shadows. She leaned against the wall.   
Violet took a seat on the edge of a cot.   
Their silence had imposed great curiosity upon me; I nodded eagerly and sat down cross-legged on the threadbare carpet. I rocked at Violet’s feet like an elf in front of Papá Noël, eager to see what they said.   
And so I learned.   
“Hauser was born at home in Southern Pines, North Carolina. This was the seventies, mind you, so the construction boom around Fort Bragg hadn’t arrived yet. There were still quiet groves of pines where a human could think and be alone. An Army brat, Hauser wasn’t particularly close with either parent. Naturally, he enlisted in the military when he graduated high school.”  
“How do you know all this stuff?” I asked.   
“Would you just shush and listen?”   
So I shut my yapper, kept rocking, and listened. Hauser enlisted 11B, infantry. He fought in Desert Storm and Somalia. After Somalia he volunteered for Army Special Forces. As an SF engineer sergeant, he caught the tail end of the major hostilities in the Balkans. He helped blow up a key bridge near Belgrade, which he never took credit for; the attack damaged a couple 122 millimeter howitzers and killed a Russian advisor. Qualified in combat diving, he has been deployed in various capacities to South Sudan, Benin, Uruguay, Thailand, and the Korean peninsula. Hauser was now the new leader of CJTF-CCC.   
“Since Hauser came to power we’ve suffered many losses,” Bala interjected. “The dude knows his stuff, and it’s our assessment that he’s going to stay put until the job is done.”  
“Till the job’s done,” I repeated.  
“He’s disciplined,” Violet continued. My head swiveled back to her. “He isn’t distracted by bread and circus. He spends his free time reading, exercising, and in mild intellectual pursuits.”  
“Allow me to sum it up for you,” Bala offered. “Hauser’s powerful. Operating out of Naval Support Activity Strough north of the city, he’s got the full arsenal of the war industry at his disposal. He has successfully used the surveillance state to pry into the lives of any citizen who he deems an enemy. Using the information he acquires, he pressures anarchists into betraying the cause, acting as sleeper agents, or even killing fellow anarchists. He knows how to pressure us: ego, ideology, money, and coercion. And he does it with finesse.   
“Finally, he’s after the same thing we’re after: society. We want to remake it into a peaceful, non-hierarchical…” She searched for words. “He wants to control society on behalf of his oligarch bosses. He knows war and espionage are symbiotic, profitable industries, but he doesn’t care. It’s the status quo and it benefits him.”  
“If he’s so terrifying, how come I’ve never heard of him?” I asked.   
Bala looked at Violet, who shrugged. Bala’s look, though, conveyed open derision for Violet having chosen me. How could you have chosen someone so stupid? her look seemed to say. I wanted to crawl under the quilt on my cot. I needed to adjust.  
“I’m headed back to the armory,” Bala announced. Addressing Violet, she said, “I hope to see you there.”  
Violet and I sat in peace for a bit. I wanted to ask her about Bala, about Bala’s background, and what type of friend Bala was. But I didn’t. I sulked with my thoughts until Violet spoke up.   
“Sit here,” she said, patting the cot across from her.  
I followed her instructions.   
“What do you think of the law?” she asked.  
“The law?”  
“Yeah, rules making stuff legal or illegal.” Her voice was genuine.  
“As an aspiring anarchist?” I asked.  
“Just answer the question, please.”  
“I don’t know, really. I mean, I think a code of conduct of some sort is helpful. But I think most laws exist to benefit the capitalist class.”  
My answer seemed to satisfy her. She nodded. “Are you familiar with Hammurabi’s Code?”  
“The Assyrian king?”  
“Well… he was Babylonian, but he conquered Assyria,” Violet clarified.   
“I see. What about him? I know his Code. Laws about crime and punishment,” I said, jockeying for a little intellectual turf.  
“Could you see him as a man concerned for the people and aware of agriculture’s potential?”  
“One love for the agriculture,” I said, unsure where Violet was headed.  
“I know, right?” Enthusiasm carved a ditsy air into her voice. She caught herself and quickly returned to her edifying demeanor. “In his shoes, would you have been as concerned with irrigation, as tuned into seasonal cycles?”  
I went in another direction: “But I thought, as an anarchist, you aren’t a fan of rulers?”  
“I’m not.” She paused. “You’re right.”  
“But?”  
“But I am a fan of traits, characteristics that are admirable in an individual, regardless of ideology.”  
“Regardless?”  
“Well…” She chuckled. Almost blushing, she corrected herself. “No capitalists allowed.”   
We both smiled.   
“Wasn’t Hammurabi a totalitarian though?” I asked.  
“Definitely. But more in the sense of a shepherd is the totalitarian leader of a flock,” Violet excused. “Alas, I digress.”  
“From?”  
“From the Code. It was simple, to the point, and it focused on individual justice.”  
“I’m listening,” I said as I leaned back on my elbows.  
Violet watched.  
“You know I did a research project on that dude in college?” I mentioned.   
“Tell.”  
“It’s been a few years since college,” I began, my jest falling flat, “but I recall my project had to do with construction standards in the Code.”  
“For real?”  
“For. Real. So the Code had rules in it about how to build. It wanted to put the tenant’s safety and the builder’s goals on the same page.”  
“It prioritized safety?” Violet asked, convincingly curious.  
“Yeah. Build an unsafe home that collapses on the tenant? Suffer the same fate as the tenant.”  
“If the tenant is killed, for example,” Violet added, “the builder would be killed too?”  
I nodded.  
“If nobody’d die, the builder’d be responsible for compensating the tenant for any losses,” Violet stated, conceding the depth of her knowledge.  
“And you support this?” I asked.  
“Nah, nothing that harsh. It’s just responsibility in practice. That’s what I support.”  
“At least the Babylonian builder was more responsible than today’s builders.”  
“Yeah?” She seemed responsive to my interpretation.   
“They didn’t cut corners to skim on costs,” I tendered.  
“Remember about a decade ago… the Grenfell Tower disaster in London?” She asked, adding to my analysis.   
“Good pint. I mean, good point.”  
“Ha! Thirsty?”  
I laughed. “We shouldn’t laugh. This is serious stuff.”  
Violet dropped the laughter in favor of serious bearing. “And over a decade before that, that bridge over the Mississippi collapsed, killing more than ten.”  
“People?” I asked foolishly.   
“No. Ten beavers,” Violet said, ribbing my idiocy.   
“Funny, but we should care for our furry friends.”   
“Beavers are a keystone species,” Violet said in agreement. I liked how she let the conversation flow.   
“By keystone species, you mean?” I asked.  
“A species that has a larger than life impact on its immediate environment.”  
“Like a lightweight fighter boxing up a few weight classes?”  
“More like a flyweight boxing a heavyweight, but that analogy doesn’t do keystone species justice. Keystone species are more like fairies with a magic touch. Their daily activities create an environment in which other diverse species flourish and bloom. You know Washington Park?”  
“On the South Side?”  
“Yeah. Prior to the revolution it was a trash-strewn lagoon, dull and barren, surrounded by monoculture grass.”  
“And now?”  
“Now, we’ve still got a lot of work to do. But a while back a few of us, I’m not going to say who, freed some beavers from the Lincoln Park Zoo.”  
I laughed, conveying an astonished admiration for their bravery.  
“We released them in Washington Park, and the results have been amazing. The Park is now a medley of marshes and ponds, each with a unique look and feel. Even the ground is now diverse. There are fields and small meadows growing in tandem with different grasses. Beavers help maintain the grasses closest to their habitat. They’re like little lawn mowers. But they don’t ruin the place like sheep do. Life now teems in the groves near their dams. I saw birds there the other day—well, it was over a month ago—that my conservationist friends haven’t seen in decades.”  
“Conservationists…” I grumbled.   
“What about them?”  
I noted, “Conservationists are most often concerned with keeping things tidy and with—” I had read that recently.  
“Some,” Violet clarified. “Some don’t allow ecology to start up again.”  
“They stifle ecology,” I corrected.  
“Well said. They fail to recognize how much nature is all about dynamic relationships among all species and the physical world.”  
“When the dust settles, post-revolution, think people will stop trying to control nature?” I thought about the ideas I had mulled over during my swim to Hew’s Tomb.  
“Hmm,” Violet said. “I hope. I hope we just reintroduce some species and then step the hell back. No right or wrong. Just let nature do its thing.”  
“I don’t get it. How’d these little guys pull all that off?” I asked, returning to the beavers.  
“The beavers? They just take the ball and run with it. First of all, they change the very configuration of rivers. They dam up certain parts, create ditches in other parts, and carve pools elsewhere. Their construction and…” She paused for a thought. “Think of them as curators. You know how a museum has a curator? Think of beavers as very active curators, but without the attitude. Beavers just go about their work, building structures around which other species thrive.”  
“Like?”  
“Other species? Ducks, otters, insects, and other aquatic animals.”  
“Fish?”  
“Hell yeah fish.” She slapped my knee. “We should go together sometime. Maybe after our next two operations, when things quiet down a bit.”  
“I’d like that. Next two operations?”  
“I imagine another anarchist group is working in that area too, because last time I was over that way I saw what looked like catfish and some crappie. Beavers attract insects, insects attract fish.”   
“But how’d they get there?” I asked. “The fish, I mean.”  
“That’s the thing. The fish must’ve been re-introduced by what I can only assume was another anarchist group.”  
“Maybe the group was socialist? Socialists can rewild, too.”  
“You make a good point. I shouldn’t assume. Either way, they’re fighting the good fight, and that’s awesome.”  
“Fishing the good fish. Who wouldn’t want that?” I asked.  
“That’s just it,” she said. “People love wildlife, but governments hate it.”  
“Why, would you say?”  
“Because government exists to obey its capitalist masters,” she explained. “Government responds to money and lobbyists first.”  
“And capitalists see the natural world as commodities. Kill the beaver. Sell its fur, its toasty coats. Sell its meat. Hunt it to extinction.”  
“A good reason to hate the so-called Intelligence Community—”  
“Because it protects capitalism?” I asked.  
“Because it protects and promotes capitalism. Before our revolution got off the ground, and before the anarchists rallied across ideological faults, the department of public works people would go about their jobs, doop-dee-doop, picking up downed branches and mowing monoculture lawns in Washington Park.”  
“They meant well,” I observed.  
“Well-meaning, sure. Absolutely. But they did a lot of damage implementing policies that came down the chain of command. Many land species need dead wood. Not unlike many aquatic species relying on beaver dams to survive.”  
I nodded, wondering how she knew all this stuff. She was certainly more informed than the average anarchist. What had been her job before the oligarchy cracked down?   
“You know how the hospital is only a few blocks from Washington Park?” Violet asked.  
“Yeah, just east of the Park.”  
“Well, the corporate subcontractors that handled the hospital waste weren’t exactly super-vigilant, shall we say, when it came to disposal of medical waste.”  
“Ew.”  
“Have no fear, though!” She puffed out her chest like a superhero. “The beaver dams even sieve out sediment containing fecal bacteria.”  
“B.S.”  
“I bullshit you not. They’re amazing! And they’re just one species. All species are incredible in their own ways. We’ve just lost touch with them.” She caught me looking for my watch. “What time do you have to be back at the range?”  
“Ten minutes ago,” I replied.  
“That’s okay,” she said. “If he gives you any shit, let me know.”  
I nodded.  
“And, no worries!” she said joyously, standing up. “We work on anarchist time!”   
I stood up too.   
“C’mon. I’ll walk you to the range.” She bounced back to the meat of our conversation: “And years before the Mississippi bridge collapse, a balcony collapsed up in Lincoln Park.”  
We walked.   
“Yeah? I don’t remember that. I was in Detroit back then.”  
“It made national news,” she reminded.  
“I honestly don’t remember it. Maybe my head was in the clouds,”   
“Maybe,” Violet said. She studied me for a moment in the dark light of the ladder column and then ascended fast and controlled, like an American Copperhead. “The point is,” she said, exiting and helping me to my feet, “today’s builders, contractors protected by legalese, might receive a fine, worst possible scenario.”  
“So the law guards the builder? Guards the corporation? Today.”  
“Yeah, but that’s besides the point.”  
“What’s the point?” I asked.  
“I guess it’s my question… How do we create a society in which we hold one another accountable without a legal system, let alone a legal system that is used and abused by capitalist class?”  
We strode across the chamber. I admired the beautiful vines that crisscrossed up the walls towards a dim light source emanating from the keystone above. And for the first time I noticed the intricate scrollwork along the arches above each doorway.  
“You’re looking for more of a code of ethics?” I asked.  
Violet opened the door that led to the range. “If you want to call it that, sure. Just looking for societal standards, whether written down or not, that emphasize care for others and personal responsibility.”  
“All for all, you could say,” I stated, walking through the door that Violet held open.  
“Exactly!” Violet said. It was at that point that I realized this had all been a lesson, a lesson to get me to see the beauty in the inherent simplicity of anarchism.


	6. Chapter 6

THE RANGE LOOKED DIFFERENT as I entered for my afternoon training session. The far left corner (northeast, as I judged it) was decorated like a nineteen-fifties living room, complete with beige carpet, aluminum kitchenette, and giant square television set. The chain of moving targets downrange was tied up off to the side. At the fifteen meter mark stood several mannequins of various shapes and sizes.   
My instructor was carrying a barstool. He placed it down in the very spot I had been shooting from earlier in the day.   
“Ignore that,” he said, gesturing to the living room in the corner. “Come here.”  
I walked toward him.   
“See the workbench over there?” the instructor asked, pointing to the near wall.   
“Yes.”  
“Please bring me the screwdriver with the green handle.”  
I jogged to the workbench, trying to show my willingness to learn and help out. “I don’t see a green screwdriver.”  
“Keep looking.”  
“How about a blue one?”   
“Okay,” the instructor said. “Let’s give that one a try.”  
I brought it to him.   
“That’s the one,” he said after a time, giving a screw one final torque. “Ready?” He placed the stool upright.   
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied. “How come I never see anyone else down here?”  
“That’s the spirit,” he replied, ignoring my question. “Sit here. I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into a utility closet recessed two paces to the left of the workbench. I hadn’t noticed it before.   
I sat down on the stool. It wobbled backwards, so I planted my feet on the ground.  
He returned quickly with a black exercise mat, which he placed behind my stool. “Face the range.”  
I pivoted slightly. The stool wobbled again.   
He handed me my pistol.   
“Pick up your feet.”  
I hesitated.  
“Pick your feet up.” His order was firm.   
I picked up my feet. The stool wobbled backward. The instructor steadied me.   
“Lean forward a bit,” he directed.   
I did so. He removed his comforting palm from my back.  
“Now,” he said, stepping in front of me, “you’ve shown outstanding aptitude for shooting.”  
I replied, “I guess what I learned in the military is still with me.” I hastily added, “But that was a couple decades ago.”  
He smiled. “Fair enough.” He spoke clearly and slowly. “This session, we’re going to up the ante: instinctual shooting from awkward angles.”  
“A stool?”  
“A barstool,” he corrected. “We’re going to work from barstools, chairs, elevators, and stairs.”  
“Oh… kay…”  
“No need to fear,” he soothed. “We’ve got the mats for a reason. Now, I want you to do exactly what we were doing earlier, but I want you fall backwards.”   
I gave him a look.  
“Only slap the trigger when you’re falling.”  
I gave him the same look, part ‘giddy up’ and part ‘what the hell.’  
“Many have come before you. If they can do it, you can do it.”  
Oddly, that was somewhat assuring. “Okay.”  
“Ready when you are,” the instructor stated, stepping back to his observation position behind me close to the wall. He turned a crank and the targets started moving erratically. Though erratic, they were moving along predetermined tracks; after a couple of hours on the range, a student would get used to the possible paths the targets could take, which was why the instructor spent his evenings retreading the tracks. Keeping the training fresh was a round-the-clock job.   
I steadied the M1911 pistol. I leaned back a bit, trying to ease into the backward fall, but the stool gave way immediately. Instead of a controlled fall, I found myself plummeting skull-first to the mat. I rotated slightly, mid-air, in an attempt to brace my fall. This only made matters worse. My bullet went into the ceiling and my shoulder and cheek went into the cobblestones. Only my hip and legs caught the mat behind me.   
“This is why we train one-on-one.” The instructor’s calm voice scratched between my ears like an old stylus on a dusty phonograph.   
I opened my eyes. I was nose-to-nose with the man’s well-worn boot.   
“C’mon, up with you,” the instructor stated. I groaned to my feet. He noticed I was a bit unsteady, so he ordered me to get some water and gather my nerve.  
“What do you think of laws?” I asked the instructor as I walked towards my water bottle.   
He didn’t acknowledge my question. He had turned the stool upside down, and was again tinkering with its crossbeams underside. “What’re you rambling about? Hydrate and get back here.”  
“I had a talk earlier about construction workers in Babylon under Hammurabi,” I explained. “I was just wondering, what do you think of laws?”  
“This one of their lectures?”  
Their? I didn’t know what he was talking about. “No, I don’t think so.”  
“When you build something, make sure it can handle the pressure.” He lifted up the stool and patted the seat.   
“Do you think the U.S. legal system can handle… the pressure?”  
“Inadequate. It must be able to handle more than whatever pressure they expect. If you build your barstools to handle a hundr’d ‘n ninety pounds, you’ll be okay for a while. But the deuce and a half is bound to come along sooner or later.”  
“Are we the two-hundred and fifty pounder?”  
“Do you want to be?” he replied quickly.   
“The capitalist would say we need to use incentives, mostly financial, as a way to protect ourselves and protect others. They excuse big oil corporations that poison our soil, water, and air, for example, by saying they just don’t have the proper incentives in place; they’re allowed to downplay any health risks associated with petroleum infrastructure. ‘All you need,’ they say, ‘is to ensure there are financial consequences for those taking advantage of the system.’”  
“You sure are talkative for a guy who just got his bell rung,” the instructor said.  
I took a big chug of water. “But that misses the entire point,” I argued to no one in particular.   
“Indeed,” the instructor replied, clearly looking to corral my enthusiasm and focus it on the task at hand. “Capitalism itself is inherently exploitative. No amount of financial penalties will cage the exploitative nature. Even if here or there someone within the system’d manage to foil a little bit of exploitation, it would be putting a bandage where tourniquet is needed.”  
“You think we need a Code?” I asked.  
“I think you need to shoot,” he replied. “Come here.”   
I put down my water bottle, massaged my temples with two dry knuckles, and walked to the instructor.  
“Now?” I asked, answering my own question. “Who knows? I’d say so—”  
“Maybe for the first couple months after the oligarchy is eradicated,” the instructor said, interrupting. “Just to get everyone singing the same song.” He handed me my pistol. “But a Code won’t work over time. The only way to progress is to ingrain our responsibility and expectations into the fabric of society itself.” He patted me on the back. “We walk and talk the golden rule, and the rest’ll just follow. Does that satisfy your inquisitive mind?” He didn’t wait for my response. “Sit your keister down and chew on that while you shoot.”  
I laughed, appreciating the relaxed learning environment he had created. My second shot went much better than my first. An hour later, I was shooting competently from a variety of falling positions. I shot falling backwards off the stool. I shot lunging left out of a kitchen chair. I shot coming up from tying my shoelaces. I even shot during the triple jump. My jumping skills were terrible—right leg, right leg, left leg was more like hobble, hobble, pfft—but my shooting was accurate.   
Thoughts of Code and comportment occupied my mind, distracting me, pleasantly, while I reset position between shots. Capitalists posited corporate rules, commercial accountability, and financial incentives. These anarchists were light years ahead of that, advancing mutually-beneficial exchange, responsibility of everyone for everyone, and golden rule motivation as the way forward. “In a way Hammurabi’s Code incentivized people by tapping into self-preservation,” I said when I had finished my first hundred rounds.  
“Yes, but be careful,” the instructor cautioned. “Those in authority—whether this authority was granted or arrogated—must know there’s a price to be paid for engaging in behavior harmful to the public.”  
“Polluting?”  
“Polluting, promoting endless war, denying the people universal healthcare, you name it. Before we rose up, those in authority never suffered.”  
I saw where he was going. “Banksters never suffered. The four-star general who parlayed his rank into a vice presidency at a war corporation never suffered. The coal lobbyist who became Interior Secretary and then loosened environmental protections—“  
“Never suffered,” I concluded. Private profits, public losses, I mused. “Think we need eye for an eye going forward?”   
“Not really. More of a golden rule.”  
“Self-preservation that goes both ways?”  
“I’m saying we take that preservation to the next level. We incorporate group preservation in our all-for-all motto. And it’s not just a motto. We act on it everyday. Peace and deeds.” He handed me a slice of bread and a damp facecloth. “Moreover, we care for the natural world. All for all isn’t limited to people.”  
As if on cue, a coyote appeared at the end of the range and scampered by, like we humans were nothing more than fluttering litter. Maybe we were.  
“You’ve got a minute break. Use it wisely.” The instructor walked to the workbench.   
“Violet and I talked a little about the construction rules in Hammurabi’s code,” I said, following my patient instructor.   
He turned to me, inhaled, and hit me with a powerful rant. “Capitalists and other centralized systems exploit the natural world at relatively similar rates. Want construction? You got glass, steel, and all-natural plaster. Brick boxes, studded with plastics, dropped in a dead-end, once a flourishing forest. No shops within walking distance. You needa car to just get out of there. En masse top-down reproduction of this cheap model peppered the Western world. Commoditized living, you dig? The under classes are made to believe that good housing is only how the rich do it. They copy each other, content in mediocrity. But our salvation lies outside of their mindset, because their mindset is fatal—an ouroboros pumping itself with venom.” He recharged with a slow inhale.  
I believed he was trying to exhaust me by overwhelming me with theory and practice. Maybe by overwhelming my brain I might’ve quieted down. Nope. I was thirsty. Shooting made me thirsty.  
“So what would be the anarchist version?” I asked as he fiddled with his wall of tools.  
“Hmm. From a construction perspective? Reclaiming the commons, shared housing independent of capitalist pressure, and us building what we want when we want, with utmost respect for the natural world that already exists.”  
I cleared my pistol and put it on safe. I placed it on the workbench and began disassembling it. I spoke. “Fight the power. There’s always room to fight the power and its utilities, junctures, and fierce divisions of labor.”  
“Those who have authority, whether granted or arrogated, from Hammurabi to the capitalist politicians in D.C., must know there’s a price to be paid for engaging in behavior harmful to the public or planet. We struggle against all forms of authority—”  
“And—”  
“And we struggle against traditional architecture. They build for the market, while we build, if needed, for the planet’s need. Which usually means don’t build. Work around what exists.”  
Inspired, I took it from there. “Adaptive, reusable structures. Ooh!” A thought hit me. “Tapping into artists. All artists have a little anarchist in them.”  
He smiled, his eyes on my hands as I reassembled the pistol.  
Violet’s voice came from the doorway down on our right. “A commune of nature, a tree in the middle of your home, a—”  
“Were you an architect before all this?” I asked without looking up.  
“I haven’t shared my former profession with you yet?” Violet asked.  
“No, you haven’t.”  
“No, I wasn’t an architect,” she confessed. “Architecture orders space. We want no firm order. Architecture can embody the full might of the state. And we want no state.”  
“But anarchists can use architects too, for an architect could help design our homes. Homes that satisfy the needs of nature and human organisms. Enable all to work out their differences.”  
Violet and the instructor exchanged smiles.   
“How’s he doing?” Violet asked the instructor as she walked up to his right. They hugged, a pleasant fortification.  
“He’s good. We’re ’bout done for the day. You want him?”   
“Yeah, I’ll walk him up,” she said, her words accented with an exaggerated sigh.  
I patted the instructor on the back and headed to the door. I exited with Violet, but soon returned to the workbench as Violet waited in the shadows.   
“Thank you,” I said. I had intended it to be a deep ‘thank you,’ but it left my lips as airy gratitude.  
The instructor looked up. He nodded and smiled. “See you tomorrow.”  
“You look stressed,” Violet stated as we ascended to the main chamber. “Hauser’s on your mind?” Before I could answer and tell her about my afternoon on the stool, she continued. “It’s normal to fret… to worry. No worries though. The man is formidable, but we have strength in numbers and the power of our convictions. He might have authority, but we have the power. Remember that.”  
“Thanks,” I said, opening the door to the main chamber. Some of the vines were sneaking in around the doorframe and poking their heads down the staircase. I smiled at them. A knowing wink, one might say.

“How are you?” I asked Violet over dinner.   
Violet smirked. “I hear the exhaustion in your voice. That’s good. Very good.” She spooned the soup away from her and slurped it quietly.   
Two children sat at the end of our table. They kicked each other playfully. Violet pretended to monitor them, but left them mostly to their own devices. I admired her ways of instruction. She was looking after them, though they weren’t her kids. A true member of the community, Violet followed what I’d say was a fair anarchist parenting tip: give the children time and space to learn from their own mistakes. Guide, but do not stifle.   
Bala sat down next to me with a decorative plate. A baked potato rested in the center. Steam rose from the potato like ash from a volcano. Pickles, about a dozen, were arranged like spokes on the plate.   
“Hey,” I said.   
“Hey.”   
Violet picked up her bowl and began drinking the rest of her soup.   
I stared right through her. I wondered how she’d proceed.  
Bala picked up two pickles and placed them on the children’s plates. “Vitamins K and A,” she said as she placed the pickles.   
“Vitamin Bala!” the young girl yelled happily. She bit into the pickle with delight.   
Violet stood up with her bowl. Bala leaned over the table and put a firm hand on Violet’s wrist.   
“I… should apologize,” Bala said, her eyes on the table.   
“Don’t,” Violet replied.   
Bala squinted up in her direction.   
“I think given what you’ve been through, I’d have been twice as furious,” Violet sympathized.   
Bala nodded. “I will apologize though. I know you’re dedicated, and I should never have questioned that. It was an asshole move, and I’m sorry.”  
“You’ve been through a lot. We’re just glad you’re home.” Violet smiled, but made no motion to sit down.  
“Any news on the fallout?” Bala asked, building conversational steam.  
“From the attack on Hew’s Tomb?”  
“Yeah.”  
“The capitalist press seems to be keeping it under wraps,” Violet noted. “All we’ve seen so far is a buried blurb in the newspaper of record about a fire on the island.”  
Bala laughed. “You’ve gotta hand it to them.”  
“Yeah,” Violet said, in sarcastic agreement.  
A familiar face walked by and scooped a mound of mashed potatoes onto my plate.   
Violet smiled broadly, gratefully. “Thank you,” Violet said.   
The friend smiled and walked away.   
Violet shot me a wide-eyed, scolding look.   
“Thank you!” I yelled after the friend. “Where are my manners?” I muttered.  
Violet shook her head like a patient mother at the end of a long day.   
“I caught today’s paper on the bulletin board this morning, but I didn’t see any mention of our rescue at Hew’s Tomb.”  
“Oh, they mentioned it,” Violet responded. “They just buried it on the last page. Something about an electrical fire in the fiber optic center.”  
I shrugged. It was probably not the right way to show disdain, but it was what I selected.   
“They’re good,” Violet affirmed. “They quoted high-level unnamed officials speaking on condition of anonymity ‘due to the classified nature of the facility.’”  
“A highly classified lie,” Bala grumbled.   
“Yes, indeed.” I changed the subject to something else, showing empathy. “Will Amlaq be okay?”  
“I want to ask you something,” Bala said, rapidly.  
I put down my spoon in response to the serious tone.   
“Actually, more like offer you something.”  
“What’s up?”   
“Would you like to help us out with another mission? I know you haven’t had much time to recover from the jailbr—”  
“I’ll do it,” I said. This was my chance.   
Bala smiled.  
“You just got released and already you’re back in the planning committees?” Violet asked.  
Bala smiled wider. “I can’t rest. You know how it is.”  
“True.”  
“What’s it involve?” I asked.  
“It’ll be a couple weeks, a nightly op,” Bala explained. “We’ll help you with prosthetics and the dude’s background details.”  
“I’m going to be recruiting?”  
“I’m going to be recruiting,” Violet tweaked. “You’ll be helping… In a way.”  
“More like seducing and then recruiting,” Bala replied. “In order to navigate oligarch territory, we gotta dress the part.”  
“Sounds good to me. What part of town?”  
When Bala told me, I replied, “Ahhh, my old stomping grounds.” I thought back to my homelessness. Those days seemed forever ago. “Now I know why you picked me.”  
“True, you know the area pretty well,” Violet began, “but that’s not the only reason why we picked you. We also picked you because you’re good. You’re an advantage.”  
“Are you kidding? I’ve been more of a liability than anything.”  
“Not true. You’re a faster learner than pretty much any other newbie we’ve had. You’re also committed. I don’t know many more people who’d wade into freakin’ Lake Michigan in early spring and swim to enemy territory.”  
“I barely made it,” I countered. “In fact, I floundered before I reached the objective.”  
“We could have given you an envelope of Canadian dollars and told you to deliver it, point A to point B. Would that have been better?”  
“You didn’t give up,” Violet continued. “You showed resolve and dedication to the cause. That’s more important than being a natural sea lion or being the best shooter in the platoon.”  
I saw their reasoning, though I disagreed with their overall assessment. Returning to the next mission, I asked, “Can we expect much support on site?”   
Bala shook her head. “So you’ll do it?”   
“Yes, sir. No, sir. Three bags full,” I said with a laugh.   
“Of course he will.” Violet raised her teapot and filled Bala’s mug. Violet placed the teapot on a tray.  
“Come, let’s review the dude’s background together.”  
They stood up and brought their trays over to the tables to the left of the cooks’ station. They scraped their leafy and starchy scraps into the compost pile and handed their trays to a kind elderly woman.   
“Bless you, darlings,” she said upon receipt.  
“Bless you, Lana,” Violet said. 

I was nodding off when Violet rocked my shoulder back and forth.  
“Before you sleep…” she whispered.   
“Yeah?”  
“Before you sleep, you need to come with us.”  
“Roger,” I replied groggily. I stood up. I discerned Amlaq’s giant silhouette in the dark room.   
“You made it!” I whisper-shouted. Amlaq had returned from Hew’s Tomb.  
Amlaq nodded very, very slowly.   
“He made it!” I proclaimed, this time to Violet.   
“Yeah,” she replied, doing a much better job whispering than I. “He’s alright, too. Shaken, but healthy.”  
“But how?” I asked.   
“As you know, other units were attacking Hew’s Tomb, and attacking Task Force sites across the city, giving us enough space to spring Bala.”  
I nodded.  
“They made more headway than we expected. And with the explosion of the fuel tanks, the Task Force more than had their hands full.”  
“You got lucky,” I cautioned, sitting up.  
Shrugging off my words, Violet turned to Amlaq.  
“We go,” Amlaq told her in a quiet bass, not wanting to wake our dozing friends.   
Amlaq nodded, turned around with the gravity of a thousand suns, and lumbered out the door. We followed him up the ladder, through the kitchen, and into the main chamber where Violet had given her speech on my first day. I had to jog to keep up, but Amlaq’s lengthy strides seemed to pose no challenge to Violet. She glided across the cold floor like a sorceress. Amlaq led us through a far door and down three flights of stairs. Violet followed, and I carried up the rear. The walls and steps reminded me of an old pirate ship. The steps looked like old driftwood. They sagged and creaked under foot. Torches adorned the walls; three on the first flight of stairs, two on the second, and a lone torch on the third. The air smelled salty. Amlaq slowed down at the bottom of the stairs.   
“Right this way,” Violet said in spooky tones.   
Amlaq halted suddenly, halfway down the dank corridor. Violet walked right into the giant man’s backside. The bump bounced Violet onto the ground. Amlaq stayed still. He was as stiff as the Elks National Memorial. Violet sprang back to her feet. I followed Amlaq’s lead and didn’t move a muscle.  
Lumbering breaths echoing in the underground corridor like a distant foghorn Amlaq spoke: “Hold.” His outstretched hand clocked me on the shoulder. I reached up and grasped ahold of the man’s four fingers. The bushy thumb fell gently atop my hand. It was surprisingly soft to the touch. Amlaq took one step and then turned left. With his free hand he flicked the wall. The kinetic energy from his middle and index fingers clanged against the iron cross brace of a door, which I hadn’t seen in the darkness. A panel slid back. To a hidden face, Amlaq gave the password in the softest pitch. Clanking, iron on iron, ensued, followed by the grinding of heavy wood across uneven stones. The door opened, candlelight spilled into the hallway.  
“Welcome to the wine cellar,” the jailer joked. He was hunched over under a mop of long white hair. His right hand grasped a massive candle. Hot wax poured over his ancient fingers, but he did not show a wince of pain. He gestured for us to enter. A lantern glowed brightly, dangling from the ceiling like the hopeful sun of a cold solar system. He was an old man, no doubt of a decorated past.   
“Thank you,” Violet said. Though her words were spoken softly, they echoed about the confines of the jail. We entered. The air was cold, almost fresh.  
“Come to visit the fiend?” the jailer asked with a chuckle. He carried himself with a comfortable pace. No rush and no worry, aside from the present. He pulled tight a foliage green watch cap over fuzzy ears.  
Violet smiled at him. He moved his non-waxy hand up and tipped the nonexistent brim of his watch cap, a gentlemanly reply.   
“She’s all yours.” He closed the iron door, relocked one of the latches, and returned to a straw bed in northeast corner. He tucked his candle amid the bricks above his head. From the recessed ledge to his right he brought down a tattered tome and began reading silently.  
A crescent of thick steel bars rimmed the southwest corner of the stony quarters. On a short stool behind the bars sat the captive. The hair on the left side of her head still retained some of its crispy puffiness, vestiges of the fashionable product she had been wearing when captured. The hair on the right side of her head sagged, matted down against her cheek and neck. She wore sandals and sweatpants, maybe from the harbor’s lost and found. Above it all she wore a blouse and a formal jacket bedecked with garish sequins. She fiddled with the soap pieces of a board game, constantly rearranging them, never satisfied. The playing surface caught my eye: ornate snakes rimmed a checkered background.   
Violet sniffed the air. “Noxious perfume. The likes of which only a capitalist could love.” The prisoner’s stench was so far removed from nature that it smelled like burned plastic. The prisoner shivered. Not with cold or dampness, but with rage.   
“How are you feeling?” Violet asked her.  
The prisoner’s chest heaved, though she remained uncommunicative.   
“Hi,” Amlaq said.   
The prisoner picked up two soap pieces and rolled them around in her hand like Baoding balls.  
“It’s no use,” the old jailer counseled loudly without looking up from the book in his lap. “She’s completely unrepentant.”   
“Has she eaten?” Violet asked over her shoulder.  
“Two squares a day,” the jailer replied before muttering a complaint under his breath.  
“Do you want to try talking to her?” Violet asked me, stepping back so I could step forward. I interpreted this as a challenge, another test. What would I say? How would I approach the task?  
I addressed the prisoner. “Would you like some more light? A reading lamp, perhaps? Maybe some books?”   
The prisoner shook her head. Her glassy eyes glimmered.  
“You can have all the books you want,” I continued.   
Her upper lip quaked back to reveal a row of porcelain veneers.   
Encouraged by the prisoner’s tepid response, Violet offered, “All you have to do is stop profiting off of war, whether the war is here at home or abroad, and divert your energies to peaceful pursuits.” Violet smiled. Maybe she knew it was a tall order.   
“We are a global aerospace, security, and defense conglomerate,” the prisoner asserted in a commanding voice. A smudge of lipstick remained on her lower lip. She bit the lip, stifling a snarl.  
“Don’t—” Violet started.  
“Our defense weaponry and equipment keep the troops safe,” the prisoner interrupted. “We also build partner capacity. And our field service representatives protect our allies…”  
“Are you speaking as CEO of Rexthrop Systems or as Under Secretary of Defense?” Violet asked, referring to the revolving door between government and corporations, a drip of derision in her phrasing.  
Without warning, the prisoner lunged forth and flailed against the bars, kicking despite all pain and pounding against all rationality. “You think you’ve won?!” she screamed. “You think you’re safe?! Why? Because you’ve got a few of us behind bars?”  
Amlaq took a step back.   
“It’s okay,” Violet assured him, placing a soothing hand on the gentle giant.   
“Well?” the Under Secretary asked, catching her breath. “Do you?” She stole a quick glance at Amlaq, stepped away from the bars, and walked back to her corner. A devilish grin gnawed at the edges of her mouth.  
“Take it easy, bub,” the old jailer said, addressing the prisoner’s outburst. Without looking up, the jailer draped a cloth bookmark in his hidebound novel and returned the weighty book to the recessed wall. He then rolled to the ground in a practiced dismount. Creaking towards the door, he unlocked and opened it with one tug from a salty forearm.   
“Time to go,” Violet said.   
Amlaq nodded. Slowly.   
Violet shook the jailer’s hand. “Love,” she said, a respectful valediction.  
Amlaq paused and waved at the man’s belly.   
“Oh, no thank you,” the old jailer said. “I already ate.”  
Amlaq cocked his head.   
“No, no. Thank you, though,” the jailer insisted.  
Amlaq summoned the old man into a gentle embrace. He then pointed upstairs. “Soup,” he offered.  
Violet smiled at the two and exited. Amlaq followed.   
I shook the jailer’s hand and released my grip to walk away, but he held onto my hand and pulled me closer. He looked into my eyes as if trying to analyze my brain. I tried to keep his gaze but it was very difficult against his inquisitive squint. His grip hardened. Just as I was about to call for Violet, the jailer released his grip. I tried to stand tall as I walked out the door, but I doubt I pulled it off.   
The door closed softly behind me.

I jogged to catch up with Violet. Amlaq had already vanished down the passageway. I don’t know if it was my groggy brain or tired body, but I let Violet know I was afraid about the upcoming operation. She responded assuredly and then said, “Wait’ll we finalize the plan before you get all worked up.”  
“Okay,” I replied softly.   
“Remember, the oligarchy is reliant on the very corporations it touts. They’ve privatized as much of the economy as they can. Free market, they say. Well, that privatization is a two way street?”  
“A two way street?” I asked. We surfaced into the main chamber. The brilliant tree pulsed, encouragingly.   
“Yeah, so, for example, a couple years back they finished privatizing all of DHS’s personnel management offices. They gave the whole process a fancy name. Personnel Security Operational Support Business Enterprise Arrangements or some shit. Well, the two corporations that now administer DHS’ personnel databases vary in their approaches to information assurance. Let’s just say we tested their defenses and breached the weaker of the two corporations.”  
“What’d you get?” I asked, sounding much smoother than I felt.  
“What’d we get? Just a big chunk of personnel files—names, addresses, social security numbers, payroll usernames, passwords, next of kin, emergency contacts, you name it. Good stuff.” She took a deep breath.   
“Impressive.”  
“Impressive? Shit, it’s gold. That dump alone allowed us to infil—” She cut herself off, adjusted her collar, and walked through the beaded curtain into the kitchen.   
I followed.  
Violet yawned. “Damn, sorry. This week I’ve been looking after the computer lab. We’re working mostly on Beijing business hours down at the lab, so I’m bushed. It throws the Task Force off our scent though. And, combined with a few other moves and precautions, it gets one group of capitalists fighting another group. Good stuff.”  
“What other tricks are up your sleeve?” I slid down the ladder.  
“I like you. You’ve got a good vibe. But I don’t like you that much.” She laughed following me down. She passed me in the anteroom. “I’ll tell you what though,” she relented, holding the door for me. She lowered her voice and whispered while I passed. “I’m glad you’re here.”  
I blushed. A vent blew fresh air onto me as I entered the living quarters. I paused to relish the sensation. My back brushed against a red and purple tapestry depicting a sunset over a rocky beach. My right heel rested against a potted plant in which a tenacious little sprout grew.  
“So you’re down at the lab and you’re helping me and you’re planning inf—, well, operations. Is there anything you don’t do?”  
“Sleep,” she said, crumpling on to her cot.   
We got ready for bed under a quilt of pensive silence. The hearth glowed bright enough to light our way around the room. Violet broke the silence first.   
“During yesterday’s attacks one of our units got some good info on the ongoing joint exercise they’ve been conducting in the suburbs,” she whispered.   
“Exercises?”  
“Yeah, retrieving info about exercises that the oligarchy’s armed forces and various police apparatuses conduct together shows us a lot.”  
“Like?”  
“Well, we might be able to identify a few weak areas regarding how well or poorly NORTHCOM works with DHS. Do they work well together? Is there any conflict? Are there any generals with egos? Do the forces integrate smoothly? How are their communications? Does one unit have comms gear that can’t connect fluidly with another unit’s? Is their corporate IT software compatible? Who is in charge of whom? What are the lines of command? Good stuff. Good info.”  
I stubbed my toe on the chest at the foot of my cot. I tried not to wince.  
She looked at me. “You like being alone?”  
“I do,” I replied through gritted teeth.  
“Me too. It’s hard these days, though.”   
“Truth. Where do you go when you want to be alone?”   
She laughed. “I can’t tell you. If I told you, I’d have to find a new spot.”  
“Are you able to get some thinking done, wherever you go?” I asked.  
“Yes. The solitude lets me reflect. I find that this reflection allows me to be more creative as a rebel.”  
“It’s too bad our society doesn’t value solitude,” I noted.  
“Mmmm. Too bad. It’s getting better though.”  
“Mmmm,” I agreed, adopting her affirmative tones. “Before the oligarchy cracked down, though… Before the revolution everyone was online all the time. No space for alone time.”  
“Think whatever society rises from the ashes will cultivate traditions that prioritize solitude?”  
“That’s a great question,” I commended. “Maybe they’ll already be enlightened, though. Maybe they won’t need to make new traditions…”  
Violet spread a blanket out over her cot and shed her outer shirt. A brown shirt now hung loosely on her shoulders. “To really forge our own path, we have to separate ourselves. I guess you could say we’re doing—”  
“I meant as individuals.”  
“I know, but it seems like our harbor might, collectively at least, provide similar benefits.”  
“Maybe.”   
We said goodnight. Out of courtesy I hesitated to creak around on my cot. I waited a few minutes. Soon her cot creaked. Then I shimmied down and my cot creaked. A moment later I was sleeping the sleep of the dead.


	7. Chapter 7

IN THE MORNING, AS I rolled out of my cot, the water in my right ear finally swished away. It was a small victory but a big relief. I wore a smile on my face as I ran through the bucket shower and brushed my teeth. I was looking forward to another day of learning. I had it all planned out. I’d grab a quick breakfast, spend the morning on the range, find Bala at lunch, and then accompany her to the armory in the afternoon. I needed to familiarize myself with as much anarchism—their daily operations in addition to their ideology—as I could; they were my future. One might say they were the future.  
GRR-BOOM!  
An explosion shook the depths of the anarchist harbor. A sunset of powder, grit from the foundation above, settled on my nose. I sneezed. Deadly quiet weighed heavily. Bare feet pattered somewhere above.   
“Heads up!”   
A flat thump echoed out from the anteroom.  
“Coming down!”   
After a squeak of hands on metal, Violet skipped into the room, pushing a bulging box ahead of her with the sole of her foot.   
“Bonds and books.” She said, eagerly, cryptically.  
“Huh?” I removed the toothbrush from my mouth, and it clacked against my teeth.  
“The bond, the link, between the author and the reader is…”  
“Beautiful?” I suggested.   
“Beautiful, yes.”   
“What was that?” I asked. I donned old olive green trousers.  
“What?”  
“The explosion.”   
“Drone strike, I believe.” She opened the box and tossed me a crisp paperback. “Beautiful and also… delightful. Books, not drones.”  
I flipped the book over and looked at the cover. “Delightful, indeed.” The cover read War Is a Racket.  
“You like it?” She dug deeper in the box, sorting its contents, some of which she arranged on the floor.  
I nodded. “The link between the author and reader is delightfully symbiotic.”  
She smiled widely at my response. “Readership,” she said, “the writer’s motivation and conviction.”  
“Nice.”  
She tossed me a small, black circle. A compass.  
“And you? What about authors?” she asked, guiding my thoughts.  
I put the book down on my cot. Delicately, I placed the compass on top.  
“Authorship…” I thought for a moment. “Authorship is the reader’s awareness and the spark.”  
“Well said.” She stood up and walked to me with an array of gear. She put the bundle of gear at my feet and began fitting a shoulder harness around my torso. “What do you take away from a good book? Better yet, how do you take information away from a good book?”   
Were we going to talk about the drone strike? I wondered. I tried to remain still as she walked around me like a tailor. “Non-fiction? I try to evaluate the opinions inside the book that I disagree with. Is there any substance to them? I try not to just chuck them out simply because I don’t like what they have to say. If I keep them, what does that information do to my assessment of Chicago? How can I incorporate that information into my daily life?” Such an approach helped me a lot in my studies of anarchism.  
“I like your words,” she said. Standing behind me, she smoothed out a nylon strap over my shoulder.  
“And, maybe most importantly,” I continued, probably blushing, “what advantage can I draw from the book?”  
“Speaking of advantage…” She stepped in front of me and eyed me up and down. She then picked up what looked like old lacrosse pads and strapped them around my ribs. They were cold and cushy. “Customized flak jacket of sorts,” she explained. She took my hand and led it to the concealed pouches at forty-five degree angles. “For your magazines.”  
“Understood.”   
She stepped back again.   
“I’m not a piece of meat,” I joked.   
She smiled courteously and then asked, “How’s your range of motion? Move your arms like a swimmer doing the breaststroke.”   
I followed her instructions. “Feels fine,” I reported.  
She turned around and returned to the box of books. “Do you think there will be novels written about this, about oligarchy and oppression, down the road?”  
“Definitely,” I replied quickly.   
“Why so sure?” She returned with a small flashlight. “Keep this wherever comfortable. Comfort and mobility are paramount.” She began measuring my head with a metal tape measure.  
“I guess I’m not so sure… It depends on who wins. Novels and official histories will be written either way. But the winner will write them. If the oligarchy wins…”  
“They won’t,” she affirmed.   
I looked up as the tape measure briefly tightened around my head.   
“No matter who wins,” she began, “I’m sure they’ll try to mold history to support their viewpoint.” She coiled the tape measure. “Tell the cage ‘seven and three-eighths’ when you go.”  
I looked at her askew, as if to say, ‘What’re you talking about?’  
“You think anarchists will tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the histories we write after we win?” she asked.   
I had never thought about it before. “I—”  
“We’re still human. Our scribes later on, or maybe people wanting credit, pretending they were in the thick of things, will distort what happened in order to suit their own aims. To suit their narrative of how shit went down.”  
“The lessons we get from reading are exactly why we’ll win,” I stated confidently.  
Violet stepped back. She scrutinized me silently. Her look reminded me somewhat of the jailer’s squint. “Do you need anything else?” she said, breaking her brief trance. “This is your basic kit. The cage will supply you with the weaponry.”  
“People consume. They don’t learn,” I asserted, shaking my head in response to her question.  
“Okay…” Her eyes followed my logic. “Learning requires reflection,” she concluded. “Most oligarchs are unable to reflect. If they reflected, they’d stop oppressing.”  
“So because they don’t reflect, they don’t learn.” It was a statement, but sounded a bit like a question. I thought that some of them might reflect. They might reflect and then decide for reasons of practicality or greed to continue going along. I didn’t say this though.  
“Exactly. And how can a team win in the long run if they never learn?” Her logic had a certain simple truth to it. “But they’ve got time. They’ve got time on their side. Learning will come to them eventually. Or their subordinates will do the learning for them.”  
Amlaq entered the room, stooped over to fit through the doorway. I hadn’t heard him descend the ladder. How could someone that size move so quietly? He whispered something in Violet’s ear. His mighty mitt covered her ear and dragged across her face. She gently pushed it away from her. It fell aside to reveal a big smile covering Violet’s face. Amlaq turned and departed in one stride.   
“This’ll have to wait, Byrne,” Violet instructed. “You’ve got a mission.”  
“I do?”  
She explained. Hauser was enemy number one. Hauser was close to a Senator, one of the premier oligarchs. I was to go on a ride along. My mission was to assess the chances of anarchists taking the Senator’s convoy on the streets.   
My throat fell barren. Some instincts told me to reject the mission and run like hell for the comfort of my old life, topside. But I was inside. I had to help. I accepted Violet’s mission.  
“You cut a fine figure,” Violet complimented.  
“Huh?”   
“We need to get you suited up!”   
I didn’t understand her pep. “Aren’t I already suited up?   
She shook her head.  
“Fine. But I like these threads.”   
“No, no. Your clothes are fine. Keep ‘em. I’m talking about the rest of your kit. Follow me!”   
Up the ladder we went. Round the tree, through one of the eight doors, and around a narrow bend. The walls, a mossy green, pulsed with life as we walked by. Life always surprised me.   
“You think men and women who serve in the oligarchy’s Armed Forces are voracious readers? Deep thinkers?” she asked.  
“I don’t know,” I replied, smirking slyly. “I imagine some fashion themselves as deep thinkers. Masters of the type of pseudo-academia that propped up much of the Beltway discourse during the early twenty-first century.”  
She took it from there. “Devoid of context. Devoid of lessons learned. Ignorant to any variable that doesn’t mesh with the prevailing good-guy narrative…” Violet turned right suddenly, leading me down a slight decline. “It’s slippery here, so please be careful,” she cautioned, coasting down the slight ramp on worn soles.   
“Thank y—” My feet zipped out from underneath me. I landed hard. My ribs started to ache.  
“Shit, I’m sorry.” Violet turned around and offered me a hand.   
I scooted down the remainder of the slope on my hands and rear, accepting Violet’s outstretched arm only when I felt the footing was sound. I coughed harshly.  
If Violet noticed my distant eyes, she said nothing.   
“It’s right this way,” she said, retaining a firm grip on my hand. “You’ll enjoy these two.”  
I didn’t understand.   
We rounded another bend. The bright lights of the cage spilled kindly into the damp passageway. Voices, alternately grating and angelic, danced our way.  
“What’s the category?”   
“Referenda.”  
“But you’ll crush at it.”  
“We’ll see.”  
“Veneto.”  
“Starting off with the big guns? Italy to… Austria?”  
“Well done!”  
“Catalonia,” the other voice challenged.   
Violet and I sidled up to the chain-linked door. Its top half was wide open. On its bottom half rested a plank of wood, a makeshift counter. Rows and rows of workbenches and shelves stretched into the distance beyond the door.   
“Jan and Jameela here will help you draw the right gear,” Violet said, introducing the two anarchists in charge of the cage.  
Both Jan and Jameela nodded politely, and continued their mental battle as they took a look at the sheet of paperwork Violet had placed in front of them.   
“Wait, no. You were thinking of South Tyrol. That goes to Austria.”  
“Crap, you’re right. Must be the depths of this dungeon.”  
Jan groaned as she adjusted her legs in order to stand up and retrieve some of the gear. Jameela unlocked bottom half of the door.   
“Right this way,” Jameela said in soothing tones, totally different from the intense voice she had used earlier.   
She reached for my hand, happily leading me deep into the cage.   
“We’ll take care of your pal,” Jameela said to Violet.   
Violet waved goodbye from the doorway.   
“How about Silesia?” Jan yelled to Jameela.  
Jameela rounded a bend, yanking my bewildered self with her. I caught a split second of Violet smiling by the cage door before I walked out of her sight. Jameela held onto my hand with a vice-like grip. The cage reminded me of the basement of an old university library. The floor was a scuffed concrete. Pipes and bare bulbs ran across the ceiling, mixing with low-slung candelabra, and books, small arms, and light weapons on eclectic racks and shelves.  
“You walk like an oligarch,” Jameela ribbed.   
“Jesus,” I replied. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.”   
She laughed. “Don’t worry. We won’t torture you for that.”  
“Torture me?” My eyes widened. She didn’t see, though. She was scanning the shelves.   
I stumbled over something sticking out from the base of a metal bookshelf. I regained my footing, and looked back as I was dragged forward. It was an old log. Mushrooms—grey, ghost white, and smoky—sprouted from its cracks.   
“Here we are.” Jameela’s eyes had settled on a large black tool chest.  
I dodged a candelabrum as I sidled up next to her.   
She opened the tool chest. The smell of motor oil and old wool swaddled my nostrils. Before me lay a quaint kit. Each item was worn, but refurbished with love: an assault rifle manufactured in Herstal, Belgium; six olive drab magazines; a separate thirteen-inch, one-pound scope, smooth to the touch, with a black anodized finish; a compact first aid kit, tan tourniquet resting on top; a green canteen; a cotton belt attached to thick suspenders; and an entrenching tool with a handle thicker than my calves.  
“Jan spent a good deal of time yesterday arranging this for you. Thank her when you get a chance.”  
“I will.”  
“It’s a simple kit, but it will serve you well, especially on this mission.”  
“Do I have to take the e-tool with me?”  
“The e-tool? No. Take only what you want. And only what you think you can carry.”  
She seized me by the shoulders and moved me perpendicular to the tool chest.   
“Stay steady,” she directed.   
“Okay.”  
“Take off your tabard and shirt.”  
I did as directed. Awkward silence descended, so I opted to make chit-chat with Jameela. “So… how’d you get involved in all this?”  
She paused, looked at me askew, and then smiled and got back to work. “In the years leading up to open oligarchy, the politicians spoke of deconstructing the administrative state,” Jameela explained. “That was just a code word for gutting social safety programs while increasing the power and size of domestic law enforcement and the War Department.” She handed me a dark plate carrier. It smelled like mothballs. “They knew that when push came to shove, the people would rise up against the oligarchy’s abuse of authority,” Jameela continued. “They knew that the people would see through their bullshit. They knew that they’d need a vast armed bureaucracy in order to protect their businesses and rackets.”  
I knew what to say. “Meanwhile they fed us nothing but austerity.”   
“Try this,” Jameela said, winking.  
She handed me a breastplate. It fit into the plate carrier well.   
I donned the plate carrier. It scraped my nose as I slid it over my shoulders. I ran my fingertips over the bristly hook-and-loop fabric.  
A gentle cello suite hummed from the ceiling. Jameela embraced the soothing vibes and kitted me up in silence. I took the hint and said nothing. I just reflected on her words about the oligarchy. She stepped back after a few minutes, seemingly satisfied with my outfit.   
“What’s your head size?”  
“Seven and three-eighths.”   
“We build our own,” she explained.   
“Am I your mannequin?”  
“No. I mean… Each of us is a curator. We load our own rounds, by hand. We maintain our own comms gear, though word of mouth is far preferable than electronic communication. And we accurize our sidearms damn well. A few days with us and your forty-five will shoot like it’s a part of you. We care for barrels, slides, and receivers like the oligarchs care for... well… Crap, what do they care for? Point is, it’s all custom and it’s all careful.”  
“I hate guns.”  
“We all do,” Jameela said, flashing me a stunning smile. “But these are the days.” She plucked a helmet off the wall and handed it to me. “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to.”  
“Where have I heard that before?” I asked myself aloud.   
“I think you’re ready, Byrne,” she assured. She seized me by the shoulders once more and drew me in for a snap-quick hug. It was over before I could enjoy it. “Up top you go.” She grabbed my hand and walked me out. I adjusted some straps with my free hand as we walked. By the time I reached the cage door, a sense of dread was climbing all over me.  
Violet was there, waiting. She read my face and gave me a comforting pat on the back. I turned to thank Jameela, but she had already disappeared into the bowels of the cage. A candelabrum swayed in the distance.  
I didn’t want to cross oligarch territory in a vehicle. From my days on the street I knew that crossing the city on foot was much easier than crossing in a vehicle. On foot, you had your options: alleys, fire escapes, doorways, side streets, curbs, jaywalking, rooftops. The list went on. And you had full control. You were in the driver’s seat, so to speak. You also had a slow pace to make decisions. In a vehicle, you were a plump target. Unless you were driving, you were not in control. You still had some sovereignty—hell, you could always bail out—but you were largely resigned to take what was coming. I didn’t like it.   
There were only a few functioning traffic lights in the city. Some said it was because various militias disarmed them tactically, reactivating them only when it suited their own ad hoc needs. Some said was because the oligarchs had told the Task Force to deactivate the lights, perhaps to sow chaos, screw with the masses, or route traffic along favorable ways. I always figured it had been the decision of some staff officer somewhere in the Task Force hierarchy. The officer would expect his subordinates to applaud when the briefing was over. When I had been in the Air Force in the days before the oligarchy was official—those days were still an oligarchy, but at least then we had two factions that pretended to care about the people—I ran into many officers who considered themselves stellar operators, even if all they did was plan the mission from the safety of an air-conditioned conference room. They’d do anything for another ribbon, commendation, or piece of brass on the shoulder. (I still think I was correct about who was behind the traffic light situation. No matter.) But in these days of open oligarchy, when you’re alone at night hidden in a bunker somewhere in the depths of a skyscraper’s foundation, these are the things that occupy your mind.   
Violet walked me topside, teaching me as we walked. The part of the city we had to drive through, Lincoln Park, was once one of the wealthier sections in town. In the early days of the transition to outright oligarchy, Lincoln Park had been a major stronghold of oligarch scheming. Served them right that their old haunt was now near ruins.  
The situation was grim. Everyone had a player in the game in Lincoln Park. Skirmishes flared along many lines: political ideology, ethnicity, religion, and history. The oligarchs threw their money around, hoping to influence outcomes. Sometimes they got their way. Often they didn’t. Lincoln Park was divided into four sections, each claimed by a rival militia. Webster Avenue, just north of Oz Park, divided the northern militias from the southern. Sheffield Avenue divided the western from the eastern. There were two main crossing points going north and south, one on Clark Street and one on Ranch Avenue. But we weren’t going to use those roads. They were just too dangerous. Sometimes they were open, sometimes they were closed. Sometimes a relatively innocuous militia leader was in charge and he or she would just wave you through. Sometimes they’d just stop you and check your trunk. Sometimes they’d shoot you on site as you approached. Sometimes information gathered by anarchist reconnaissance was rendered unusable overnight, as a bulldozing team would rework the landscape in the arc of a moon, leaving new mounds of rubble and uncharted scrap—perfect nests for sniper teams.  
One of the biggest pains was a residential high-rise located at 2550 Lakeview, along the western edge of the park itself. Once a spot for the idle rich to soak in the seafront, it was now a towering jenga of riddled windows and artillery-pockmarked façades. The cut of the destruction made the building look like it was a winking octogenarian when approached from a certain angle. Still strategically important, the high-rise housed snipers of all stripes, each plying their trade from the windswept comfort of a one-time master bedroom. The snipers. They varied in professional caliber as well as rifle caliber. Some took care to shoot wisely and frugally. Others shot at anything that moved. Snipers terrified me the most. Mines, IEDs, machine guns, missiles, bombs—they all sucked, don’t get me wrong. But the cold dread of operating beneath the glare of a sniper was pure terror. Worst yet, all of the recreational facilities contained within Lincoln Park—courts, conservatories, fields, theaters, parks, ranges, museums, a zoo, golf courses, and beaches—made for endless hideaways, pillboxes, reinforcements, camps, and camouflage caches.  
These days, a group of oligarchs funded one religious faction, in particular. Armed to the teeth with fancy gear, the faction would gain a few blocks in a week, only to lose it all by the new moon. In return for the fresh gear and fine weaponry, the faction would keep their eye out for known or suspected anarchists. Man, the oligarchs considered anarchists a major threat. The few anarchists who the militia managed to capture were executed on the spot. That lasted as long as the funding and gear flowed. When the lucrative spigot dried up, the religious faction stopped singling out anarchists. I asked Violet why the oligarchs stopped funding that religious faction. She didn’t know. A lot of oligarch behavior was confusing. Sometimes they made brilliant moves from the anarchist perspective, and other times their moves made no sense. Perhaps it was the echo chamber in which they made their decisions, not unlike the think tank syndrome common to the Beltway back in the early Global War on Terror.   
Though I hadn’t recognized it at the time, the early War on Terror was when the oligarchy really made their grab for power. War corporations funded the think tanks and purchased advertising on corporate media, thereby controlling the pro-war narrative. The war corporations also bought off the politicians, red and blue, by funding their election campaigns and lobbying daily, thereby ensuring endless war. It all had been so straightforward.  
I was sweating bullets as we approached our ride. I hoped that those were the only bullets I’d be seeing that day. From the depths of the harbor we stepped into a cramped garage, topside.  
I noticed the V-shaped hull first. The automobile, a Japanese model, subcompact hatchback, sat high on thick tires. A stream of bullet holes speckled the left side, crossing both doors. The front windows looked thicker than normal, and they distorted light like acrylic glass. A man I didn’t recognize lurked on the far side of the vehicle.   
“No tailpipe. What’s it run on?” I asked.  
“Be careful,” Violet whispered, ignoring the question. “He’s a little…”  
“A little what?”   
Too late. The man was in earshot.   
“I’ll be your chauffer for today,” the man said with an exhilarating twinkle in his eyes. He stepped around the vehicle and opened the rear passenger door for me. The man’s beard swooped into a wide point, almost like a spade. Its redwood hue smoldered beneath the garage’s lone bulb. His jacket puffed up like a lumpy pillow. Ammo, I hoped. His dusky skin surfaced in only a few places—the spot under his left eye and above his beard, and an earlobe that had wormed free from a brown wool hat. A bandage covered most of the territory under his right eye. His irises, big and brown, followed me into the car. He closed the door softly, said something to Violet, and hopped into the front seat. I buckled my seatbelt.   
The steel roll-up garage door ascended very quickly, exposing the bare street in front of us.   
“I—” My question flew to the back of my throat as the chauffer accelerated rapidly out of the garage. Shaking off the whiplash, I turned around to find Violet’s feet heading back inside, the steel door slamming down. The chauffer careened down the slope beneath an overpass, peeled into the desolate street, and whipped around the nearest bend.   
“What was that?” the chauffeur asked with a hearty laugh.   
“Nothing,” I replied.   
“Buckle up!”   
I tightened my seatbelt. I looked around the tiny automobile. I wondered how fast it would go if it didn’t have so much armored plating.   
“I appreciate you taking the time to—”  
“Don’t mention it. Don’t mention it,” he assured.  
I forced a laugh as I looked up at the low cloud cover.  
“We’re all in this shit together, right?” the chauffer asked rhetorically. “Right. Right. And don’t call me ‘son’!”   
Huh? I hadn’t. Was he all there? I looked out to the streets. Buildings zipped by. Part of me longed to be out there, roaming again. Why didn’t the anarchists use me that way? Why didn’t they take better advantage the skills I had crafted during my homelessness? I shook these thoughts out of my head and focused on maintaining my situational awareness. Fraught furtive ghosts passed in the crisp spring air like a factory whistle.  
The chauffer accelerated, bringing my attention inside the vehicle. He was glancing down at his lumpy cellular device. Various antennae and instruments protruded from the device’s sockets like benign tumors. He looked at the road, then back down at the device’s black and white screen.   
“Nineteen texts,” he grumbled. “Musta just passed through a field.” He tapped two buttons on the keypad, holstered his device on the dash, and refocused on the road ahead. He then swerved gracefully around a family of deer in the road. I had to admit, I was impressed with the man’s skills.   
“Ya hear the explosion this morning? Or are you fellows too deep to hear shit?”  
“No, I heard it. Did you hear it? Where are you located?” I asked.  
“You heard it, huh? Well, take a look.” His eyes in the rearview mirror swished left, telling me to look. I looked left.   
At first I thought the black swelling on the approaching corner was a trash bag. Maybe someone had good intentions and had left it there because they had yet to adjust to a lack of public works. Maybe a passing Task Force member, one who still consumed like it was 2018, had dumped it there.  
The chauffer let up on the accelerator thirty paces before the stoplight. He coasted into the intersection, checking both ways but never stopping, always ready to accelerate at the slightest whiff of danger. A stoplight swung haughtily above, airing out its metallic grin like a corrupt judge.  
The trash bag de-pixilated into limbs and clothes.  
The young man, a teenager perhaps, lay cold.   
A putrid yellow covered his face, lending the torn flesh a waxy appearance in the streetlight’s glow. Torn, singed clothing covered the corpse’s shattered feet. One leg sprawled over the other, like a crusty noodle. Where a foot once attached now dangled splintered tibia and fibula, bitumen coating the stringy flesh to create a russet cosmos. Concrete haunches rose up in two separate bursts, paces beyond the corpse. A frozen human chili coated one tooth of the concrete slabs.  
Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed the grisly tang. I thought of my younger days and days to come.   
The chauffer muttered a quick benediction and accelerated along the empty streetbeds. The singed pavement of the drone strike faded into a black smudge.  
The human had been targeted by the Task Force’s sensors, gnawed to cud by the molars of the war industry, and ripped from this world by the oligarchy’s censors. Corporate media would not mention the charred corpse. If they dared or slipped up, the corpse would only be mentioned as collateral damage.   
“Seen it before,” the chauffeur said, turning left sharply. He avoided a jackknifed dump truck by taking the far sidewalk at full speed. “Seen it before.”   
“Who was he?” I feigned empathy, though genuine concern for the dead was largely turned off inside of me.  
“Who knows?! Who knows?”  
“What did they get him for? Why was he targeted, I mean?”  
“We’ll never know. He prolly didn’t do shit. Wrong place, wrong time. We’ll never know.”


	8. Chapter 8

A ROADBLOCK ROLLED TOWARDS us from the horizon. I did my best to assess the situation from the backseat. Defensive positions behind layers of sandbags stacked like bloody lips in wide arcs, each supporting multiple lines of fire. An outer ring of guard towers kept watch as we drove deeper into the bottleneck leading up to the checkpoint.   
Shipping containers poked into the avenue. We passed them one by one. The space behind the first shipping container revealed the unmistakable barrel of a .50-caliber machine gun, calling to us from a pillbox. The space behind the second shipping container revealed a squad of mercenaries. They were taking a knee around a stocky leader whose lips slurred rapidly. They paid our vehicle little attention. Behind the third shipping container was nothing but flat concrete protecting a metal grate in the ground. Behind another shipping container, this one on the left side of the avenue, relaxed a man in a beach chair. He wore jogging shorts, like he was at a scorching Memorial Day barbecue. A beer chilled in his left hand. Binoculars chilled his right. I thought I caught sight of a steel Army helmet in his lap, but I couldn’t be too sure. We had already begun rounding the first S curve. We weaved through three more tight turns.  
The chauffer applied the brake, rolling us to a perfect stop in front of the barricade. Two gentlemen stepped forth from a guard shack on the right. Guard shack? More like sandbags buttressing layers of hulking scrap metal (some burned out car roofs, some cast iron fireplace backs) welded together into a formidable mass. It all gave off an air of childish ingenuity. But we respected it like we’d respect a juvenile Great White.   
The chauffer rolled down his window a quarter of the way. The first gentleman stepped to his window. The second gentleman walked to the front right corner of the vehicle and stopped, almost straddling the hood. The chauffer whispered something to the first gentleman. I couldn’t hear the words exchanged. The gentleman never even glanced at me in the back seat. Should I have been confused, worried, or relieved? I didn’t have time to think. Without turning, the second gentleman motioned to someone behind the layers of scrap metal, and the barricade in front of us started rising slowly. The second gentleman lifted his right leg up and over the front of the car just as the chauffer started accelerating. It struck me as a slow motion tango.   
We roared out of the checkpoint. I felt the weight of a thousand ammo boxes lift off my chest. I caught myself breathing heavily and worked hard to get my breath under control. As my breath steadied, I tried to mentally relax. The driver is competent, I told myself. He’s the best at what he does. Panicking will not help the matter. Just hang on. We roared over a bump and skidded around a bend. Jesus. I tried to distract myself by taking in the sites.   
First up was Grant Park. Seated Lincoln whizzed by on my right, but I didn’t get a good look at him because the chauffer yanked the emergency brake. My head brushed the window as we whirled around. Sod and pebbles clanked against the undercarriage. I looked behind us, feeling my temple for blood. Nobody was following our vehicle, as far as I could tell, so why had he yanked the e-brake? I looked at my hand. No blood, though my left temple burned. Resigned, I sat back. We were now driving in the direction from whence we came. I got a much better look at Seated Lincoln on the second pass, though, admittedly, my vision was fuzzier this time around. Lincoln looked angry. Maybe he was. Was this insanity the republic he had envisioned? The off-road path from Grant Park to the Art Institute took less than two minutes by my watch.  
It occurred to me… This was the spot where Harrison, a prominent early anarchist, had been pricked with an umbrella as she waited for a contact amid a crowd of spectators. People had been playing pick-up fútbol on the grass over which Lincoln gazed. Four days later Harrison was dead; the pellet injected into her leg had contained a naturally occurring toxic substance extracted from a perennial flower once widely found along the shores of the Lake. The attacker was never caught.   
Patches of sunlight wiggled along the façade of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was a pretty building with welcoming architecture. The Art Institute had been the Task Force’s first headquarters. It had served them well. The Task Force had invested significantly in the building’s infrastructure: reinforced front windows; machine gun nests next to the lions on the front steps; walled off south garden, its fountains now stocked with yellow perch and northern pike; anti-aircraft batteries on the roof, put there prior to the oligarchs’ familiarization with the anarchist strengths. Rumor had it the oil painting Saint Jerome in Penitence still adorned the walls inside. In a superstition that crossed all ideologies, no one—oligarch, mercenary, anarchist, or apolitical militia—dared take it down. I wondered what faction roamed inside these days.   
I closed my eyes. When I opened them we were again headed north, though this time along the sidewalk of a broad avenue. It was a smoother ride. I tried to relax some more. I looked in the rearview mirror. The chauffer was focused, content. In less than eight minutes, the Lincoln Park conservatory roared into sight.   
I wondered how long it would take for nature to reclaim Lincoln Park as a whole. How long until trees sprouted strongly in the middle of the street? How long until piles of rubble decomposed, no… composed into piles of grit, into mounds of dirt from which plants might bloom? How long until a remaining green spot amid all of the concrete, a place like Wrightwood Park, was able to spread its seed near and far? Places like that, I imagine, would—. A bump jolted me out of my kind reverie. Before my eyes flitted to the approaching statue, I had one last deep thought: Maybe nature was already reclaiming Lincoln Park. I probably just didn’t notice it. Silly human.   
The statue of Friedrich Schiller stood proudly at the south end of the garden outside the Lincoln Park conservatory—just outside the botanical garden, just south of West Fullerton Avenue. In the early days, the Task Force had used the Schiller statue as a spot to liaise with top aides. It gained in popularity. Soon, Defense Intelligence Agency case officers working for NORTHCOM started using it. Case officers are people who recruit others (usually from the enemy camp) to spy. Freshly minted case officers passed information to contacts in the shadows of the philosopher-poet-historian. The location gave them a sense of pride, I guess. Perhaps its regal stance helped the oligarchs convey an appreciation of service, framing case officers’ future actions as duty to the country, not direct service to the oligarchy. Perhaps the statue’s oxidized exterior conveyed a certain weight to the case officers’ upcoming travails.   
The next leg of the trip, a straight shot from Lincoln Park conservatory to the DePaul quad, lasted less than two minutes, full speed. Our windshield caught the ratty banner of an old health food store as we took the sharp corner south on Sheffield. For the split second that the green banner coated our windshield I felt like a kid in a carwash. I tried relishing the feeling, but the screeching tires thwarted that. I wondered if these high speeds were necessary. The chauffer’s look of calm determination assured me they were.   
The next minute was spent navigating the perimeter of the desolate university campus. Then we rocketed northwards on the university’s old quad. I was impressed with what seemed to be some guerilla permaculture techniques on what was once the main green. The chauffer must have been impressed too, because it was one of the few times he let up on the gas pedal, taking care to avoid all of the plants.  
“Thanks!” I yelled from the backseat.   
“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “I know how you anarchists are about the Earth!”   
“You’re not an anarchist?”   
“Trotskyist!” he yelled, adding, “We’ve got the same enemy!”   
“So it seems.”  
A militia’s roadblock came into view. The chauffer flashed his high beams at them. Four flashes, by my count. Then a fifth. I scanned the rooftops. I didn’t catch any rifle barrels. Well trained, I thought. Hand signals flashed among the parties. Scouts on the street. The chauffer accelerated. What did he know? Was he cleared to pass or was he about to run the barricade and cause a major incident, to put it lightly? We passed through the militia’s roadblock without incident. As we sped through the temporary gap in the tight barricade, I shifted my legs. They felt cramped and restless like I had been on a transcontinental airplane trip.   
“We’re here!” the chauffer yelled, though he showed no sign of decelerating.   
“I—”  
The chauffer yanked the wheel and drifted into a covered alleyway. A thick blue tarp, lined with something—Wool? A rough carpet?—hung low above our heads. It would have caught on the roof rack of a larger automobile. I began to think this alleyway was somehow customized to fit our arrival. I couldn’t help but smile at the ingenuity of the anti-oligarch forces. They were certainly something.  
Crates and pristine dumpsters lined the snug alleyway, leaving no room for me to open my door. How was I going to get out of the car? A more pressing concern then came to mind: How was I going to live? The chauffer was barreling towards the green tarp-covered wall at the end of the alleyway.   
Tired of being resigned to the man’s insane driving skills, I tapped him on the shoulder. “Would you mind slowing down?” I didn’t know what else to say. My words came out submissive and frail.  
“Why didn’t you just say so?” He guffawed. “You don’t have to be so sensitive about it.”   
He let up on the gas pedal, though our momentum was still carrying us at high speeds to the wall looming ahead.  
“Brakes?!”   
He just howled more laughter.  
I braced for impact.   
We coasted into, and right through, the flapping tarp.   
He applied the brakes delicately.   
I looked around. We were in an abandoned parking garage. In each parking spot stood an independent computer station. Mainframes, cables, and racks of servers with blinking lights ran from supporting column to supporting column. We breezed by it all and descended another level. The tires whined.   
“Welcome to the You-Lug moving equipment company.”  
I paid no attention to the chauffer’s words. I placed my grip on the door handle, ready to jump out as soon as the vehicle slowed down enough. Thick tires squawked around the bend, and, as soon as the chauffer straightened out the wheel, he applied the brakes fully. I yanked on the door handle. It didn’t catch. I was locked in!   
The chauffer hopped out of the driver’s seat and opened my door in one smooth swoop. He wore the flattering smile of a doorman working Friday nights at a luxury Chicago hotel.   
“You anarchists are always so sensitive,” he ribbed.   
I chuckled meekly as I stood up.  
“Again. Welcome to the You-Lug moving equipment company.”  
“Thanks.”   
The chauffer led me through several layers of guards, lethal decorations stationed around the parking garage’s supporting columns. My feet echoed off the concrete. My jaw dropped when I passed the third row of guards; Violet and Amlaq stood there waiting for me.   
“How the…?” I mustered.   
“Don’t ask,” Violet responded. “Ready for your mission?”   
I swallowed. “Was this another damn test? Another goddamn test? I don’t have the stomach for more.”   
“Sure you do,” Violet said, the pep obvious in her voice.   
Amlaq grinned. His teeth were the size of Jefferson nickels. Just as round, too.  
“Sit,” Violet ordered, producing a chair from behind a column.   
I walked forward with the eagerness of a toddler crawling on shattered glass. I sat down. As soon as I sat down, all but the outer ring of guards turned their guns on me.   
“What is this?!” I shouted.   
The gun barrels were too many to count.   
“We’ve got a leak. Someone’s leaking information to the Task Force.”  
My heart nearly exploded through my chest. “It’s not me, for shit’s sake!” Sweat boiled my brow. “How—”  
“Tell us about Detroit,” Violet ordered.   
“What about it?”  
“You spent some time there, yes?”  
I faltered. How did they know so much about me? I’d profess I had nothing to hide, but the extent of their knowledge was worrying. “Yes.” I tried to sound casual.   
“Tell us about it.”  
“What… in specific?”  
“Just tell us about your experiences there.”  
Was she trying to see if my information matched her information? What if I left something out by accident?   
“Okay…” 

Please don’t call anymore. From dismal origins it turned into a friendly greeting on the streets of Detroit. Since any phone call from Detroit inevitably brought the oligarchy’s goon squads down on the recipient of the call, people on the receiving end who lived outside Detroit soon picked up their phones with a simple. “Please don’t call anymore.” And so it began.   
Motor City had become Monitor City. Rock City, Rocket City, a nod to the batteries of state-of-the-art missiles lining Belle Isle and much of the Detroit River, courtesy of a war corporation based in Grand Prairie, Texas.  
Detroit was a city where wearing drab clothing or being homeless attracted police questioning, a city where ubiquitous surveillance stifled even mundane expression, a city where a handful of local, mid-level oligarchs ruled from the comfort of peripheral compounds.   
The daily dance with state surveillance rocked the people’s senses from morning to night, from first light to the time they hit the rock hard pillow at dusk. Checkpoint after checkpoint, street patrol after street patrol, we soon learned to conceal our communications via encrypted apps. When we figured out that they had broken all the encrypted apps, we abandoned our phones altogether. Arbitrary detention was commonplace. Artists, journalists, immigrants, academics, and anyone else who thought outside the prescribed boundaries were the oligarchy’s favorite targets. Anyone advocating in public or private for a Bill of Rights was considered a subversive.  
Subversives would end up in political education centers. There, they’d study approved versions of U.S. history. You know, textbooks that insist the U.S. had no choice but to drop atomic bombs on civilians in Japan. Textbooks that paint the Cold War as the U.S. merely responding to Soviet aggression. Textbooks that never mention capitalism, let alone question it. Approved versions of U.S. history. Suspected subversives would also study law, analyzing case studies that showed the legal system helping people of all stripes. They’d even study what was appropriate dress and what were proper customs and courtesies. Tangible rewards for prisoners included seeing daylight, walking outside one’s cell, and arts time, as long as the resulting crafts supported state histories. If released from the political education center, most subversives would be so deflated they would never pose a threat to the status quo again. To make matters worse, friends and family often shunned people who had been inside. Once released, a person was often all alone. The anarchists were one of the few groups who helped the strays.  
In corporate media, the oligarchs pointed to tangible investments in Detroit’s infrastructure. Detroit had the most extensive fiber optic and wireless network in the Midwest, they’d say. Detroit had the most responsive construction crews this side of the Mississippi, they’d say. True, but most of Detroit’s residents couldn’t obtain passports. Tunnels and bridges into Canada were shut. Routes 94 and 69, blocked. Some ferries ran to Canada, but they’d run at a steep price: seeds, hard cash, sexual favors, and lives.  
Violent attacks against the oligarchy’s strongholds, no matter the perpetrator, were used as an excuse to clamp down, restrict movement, and install more surveillance devices. Authorities and passive citizens called it ‘big data.’ Neighbors disappear overnight.  
Security was big business. Full body scanners and facial recognition technologies were the most lucrative industries last fiscal year, iris recognition and fingerprint scanning coming in a close second. Such technology seemed to be everywhere on the street. It made homeless life an even bigger drag.  
Violet nodded. My words were what she wanted to hear.  
On a peaceful day, everyone and anyone could be stopped on the streets of Detroit. Anyone who still had a smartphone was not allowed to have encrypted Voice over IP apps or virtual private networks. And whenever a large gathering or a protest broke out, the Department of Homeland Security shut down the phone networks “so lives can be saved.” DHS cited “priority” and “pre-emption.” These principles had been established a decade earlier when the major telecommunication corporations established a government initiative called OrigiNet, a VIP tunnel of sorts on the broadband spectrum. Priority gave local police and the federal government rapid, first access to wireless broadband. Pre-emption allowed them to kick the general public off the network. The major telecommunication providers played along since the deal was worth billions.  
“Detroit was ground zero for real-time trial of voice recognition software,” Violet said, giving me in affirming nod.  
Yes. The human voice is stable. It is hard to change, hard to mask efficiently. In that sense, technology was on the oligarchy’s side. Powerful computers would process a person’s voice characteristics into a voiceprint based on a variety of factors, including length of larynx, length of tongue, shape of mouth, height, weight, and pitch. Prior to the revolution, voice recognition software had helped the middle and upper classes pay their bills, regulate home appliances, access healthcare data, update wireless wearable technology, and arrange international travel. People had welcomed voice recognition into their homes and lives. Those who had declined such convenience were met with ridicule from most sections of society. Meanwhile, the surveillance state had become entrenched, aided and abetted by those who uttered a common refrain: “It doesn’t bother me. I’ve got nothing to hide.”  
Apparently convinced of my sincerity, or at least my accuracy, Violet chimed in. “Over time, National Security Agency technicians in Fort Gordon developed a precise and accurate targeting system, capable of mass sweeps and pinpoint parsing of Detroit’s populace across any segmentation the analyst could dream up. In seconds, one mercenary could scan tens of thousands of hours of voice recordings and come up with the target’s voiceprint among the vocal chaff. The mercenary could then further refine the results based on keywords. Technicians soon automated the software to be able to identify a target within a district, metropolis, state, or country, based just on register or language spoken.”  
“Exactly!” I concurred.   
Violet walked behind me. “Continue.”  
I fumbled my way ahead. “I don’t know… as much as you do about the inner workings of authority, but… I hear they were able to divide and select voice recordings based not only on the location of a transmission but on the regional accent employed by the speaker.”   
“Good,” Violet said, applauding my knowledge, not the content of my words. I could tell she wanted to trust me. Mapping this across time and space, she explained, led to what Fort Gordon analysts began to call the ‘pocket spectrogram.’ This lingo soon caught on within the National Security Agency detachment at Naval Support Activity Strough. The NSA detachment there—NSA at NSA—took the reins with voice recognition. Naval Support Activity Strough was soon off and running on its own. The pocket spectrogram started to funnel all sorts of data: SMS + internet browsing history + gait recognition + fingerprint + iris + RFID + employment records + IRS data + driver’s license number + voice watermark + social media networks + miscellaneous metadata. It tagged results based on supposed religion, morality, patriotism, and education.   
In an official tone, Violet mocked, “We build broad verification systems in order to initiate crisis response mechanisms in a conscientious and diligent fashion…. Thereby safeguarding property and ensuring stability.”  
“You’re with them now?” I joked. My stomach growled loudly.  
“Finish. Surprise me.”  
I did my best to sum up the situation in Detroit. It had eventually reached the point where the city was a testing lab for all of the latest war industry gizmos. No longer did the U.S. war industry need to travel to Bogotá, Kabul, Lagos, or Damascus in order to test out their latest weaponry (though they still did).  
“What about the law?” Violet asked.   
“Legality didn’t matter.” Legalese was always on the oligarch’s side. NSA headquarters at Fort Meade would classify voiceprints as metadata, exploiting a legal loophole through which they effectively spied on U.S. citizens and got the voiceprint program off the ground. Any time NSA felt a modicum of legal pressure, they’d just switch all of the stored voiceprint data to the cloud servers of private corporations, thereby obviating the once-in-a-lifetime congressional inquiry into NSA activities. Now that the oligarchy was firmly entrenched, congressional inquiry was no longer a worry.  
“Did you know the oligarchs even hire graffiti artists to spray-paint pseudo slogans along prominent boulevards and avenues?” Love my city, love my country was a common refrain greeting passing vehicles and pedestrians alike, Violet told me. Her voice was gentle.  
“That doesn’t surprise me,” I replied.   
Violet stepped forward. She seemed satisfied with my story.   
“One more question,” she asked. With a flick of her wrist the first ring of guards lowered their weapons. The second ring of guards kept their barrels trained at me, center-mass. “One more question,” she repeated.   
Amlaq stepped forward and placed his giant hand on my shoulder. “What… Is… Anarchy?” boomed his voice.  
I looked over my shoulder at him. He wasn’t smiling. His hand weighed on me.  
“What are the principles of anarchism?” Violet clarified.  
“Jesus. I—”  
“What are the principles of anarchism?” she repeated. The calmness in her voice shook my will. I had thought we were friends. I had thought she was a protector of sorts. Now what was she? I swallowed hard and gathered my thoughts.  
“Okay…” I began. “Anarchism…”  
I described it the best I knew. I had studied it long and hard. I had studied it like I had studied all of the knowledge I had just emptied into the underground parking garage. I knew anarchism in and out, though only through books, papers, and what little I had witnessed so far in the anarchist harbor. I started slowly, explaining… A small group of people cannot know or care for millions, let alone billions. Bottom-up solutions are the only way forward. My words gained steam. Reject all coercion. All forms of coercion. Our voices are all equal. We care for everyone. Operate under the Golden Rule. All for all. All. For. All.  
The rest of the guards’ weapons relaxed to low-ready.  
I breathed deep relief. My sigh echoed off the concrete columns.  
“What about my mission?” I asked, wanting desperately to get to the surface, street-side, and sort out my thoughts. “Do you still want me to reconnoiter the Senator’s route?”   
Violet nodded.   
“We’ll meet back at the anarchist harbor tonight,” she concluded.   
And with that she left. I kept my eyes forward as she walked away. The anarchists in front of me dispersed into the shadows like a drops of water on a jungle floor. A metal door clanged behind me somewhere. I stood up, faltered, and stood up again. I had my work cut out for me.


	9. Chapter 9

THE SUN WAS RISING by the time I ducked underground, back at the anarchist harbor. Dirty, exhausted, and miserable, I had ended up walking almost the whole way, though it hadn’t been a straight shot. I had walked triple the distance in order to circumvent militia territory, mercenary hides, and a mined stretch of North Ogden. I also had to walk very slowly; I was a mere homeless man wandering the streets with no particular place to go.   
I went straight to the showers.   
My eyes were drooping as I scrubbed myself down with a cold sponge.   
“How’d it go?” Bala asked from the doorway to the washroom.   
I pretended I was not annoyed by her sudden presence. “Can’t be done,” I stated firmly.  
“Can’t be done, or you won’t do it?” Bala challenged.   
“Can’t… be done.” I picked up a red watering can and rinsed myself off.  
Bullshit, said her scowl. She pushed off the doorframe with her shoulder and disappeared into the living quarters. I toweled off and followed her, arguing my case. “Look. They’re not stupid. They know most people loathe the oligarchy, despite all the propaganda to the contrary. They know most people would take a shot at the Senator if given the chance. They know, despite some fawning crowds, the oligarchy is living—”  
“On borrowed time?” Violet asked, sitting up on her cot. She tossed me a fresh sweater.   
“Yeah… Anyway, it can’t… be done.” I ducked behind an ornate partition and began getting dressed.  
I heard Violet get up and pace.   
“They’ve…” I stepped out from behind the partition and walked to my cot. “Let me show you.” I plucked a dusty piece of chalk from my trunk and walked to the wall. Bala was standing to my right. “Pardon me,” I said. I pulled back a cloth tapestry, which pictured a large tiger running across the Blackstone Library steps, and started tracing light circles on the dark grey concrete. “They’ve got four or five concentric circles protecting the principal.” I marked the positions of the protection detail. “And look at the spacing. Even if we somehow penetrate the outer circles, which, by the way, are all about detecting anomalies and deflecting trouble—”  
“How good’s their AI?” Violet asked Bala, who had joined Violet in pacing.  
“The artificial intelligence in their facial recognition software is decent, but overwhelmed. With so many suspects in the system and so many potential troublemakers, they often don’t even turn it on. They’re better off—”  
Bala asked Violet, “Is there any way we could exploit that? Somehow leverage it to screw with them, thereby providing us with a way to attack unseen?”  
“We could, we could,” Violet replied. “It would take some time to set that up, though.”  
“Time we don’t have,” Bala concluded, following sharply in Violet’s wake. Addressing me, Bala prompted, “You were saying…”  
I let the tapestry drop back into place. “They’re better off just going old-fashioned secret service style, which is what they do most days. The outer circles are sharp. The inner circles cover up the principal in the event of an attack or even a firework, as I tested, and evacuate the principal pretty damn quickly.”  
“Hmmm.”   
“Yeah, hmmm. They’ve also been deploying overhead assets, helicopters and such, to supplement their detail.”   
“Drones or piloted?” Bala asked.  
“Both,” I confirmed. “From what I can tell, they’ve got some older MQ-8D models that work well for VIP protection.”  
“Easy to control, able to land almost anywhere…” Violet trailed off. She stopped in her tracks. Bala stopped behind her. “You must be hungry.”  
I nodded once, trying to play it cool. But I was in fact very hungry.   
We proceeded upstairs and into the kitchen area. The room was packed. We went through the chow line in silence. Well, I was silent, contemplating. Bala nibbled at her cheek and brooded. She only perked up when speaking Spanish with the cooks. Violet picked up a young boy and played with him as she walked through the line. He held her plate as she plopped leafy vegetables and beans on top.   
“So what about taking them in transit?” Violet asked, once we were all seated on the floor in the corner.  
“An ambush?” I asked.  
“Yes.”   
“I considered that. They know it’s coming. There’s only one place suitable for an ambush along the Senator’s usual route: a tight curve coming down a steep descent.”  
“Oooo,” Bala crooned. I couldn’t tell if she was enjoying her craft or her food. “He’d have to slow down there. Tempting.”   
“Tempting indeed.” I replied. “But they know what we know… in that respect, at least. They’ve placed two overlapping machine gun nests at the tight corner.”  
“Hmmm. Anything else?”  
“Not much.” I talked a bit about the roadblocks at two major intersections.  
“That’s nothing new,” Bala muttered. “We could have found out that information with a few smoke signals.” She raised her voice. “He’s bringing us nothing new.”  
“So what’ve you learned so far, kid?” It was the old jailer. He limped over to us from the nearest table with a big smile on his white-whiskered face. I wondered who was guarding the oligarch in the wine cellar.  
Kid? I thought. But I smiled. “Not much,” I joked.   
The jailer sat down. His bones creaked like a wicker chair.   
“Not much?!” the jailer roared like a squall. “Not much?!”   
“He’s joking with you,” Violet assured. Addressing me, she said, “Tell him you’re joking.”  
“I’m joking,” I said.   
This seemed to satisfy the jailer a bit. “Yesss,” he said through a yawn. He took a whopping bite of mashed potatoes.   
“I’ve learned how to shoot and how to sleep well on a cot.” I caught his yawn and let it thunder, causing a few heads to turn.   
“El Vagabundo!” one of the cooks yelled approvingly.   
The jailer laughed. I appreciated his swings in mood.   
“I’ve also learned that even mentioning Hauser’s name is tantamount to invoking a dark lord.”  
The jailer looked at the roots roaming across the ceiling, cracked his neck, and, cracking his neck in the other direction, winked at the portrait on the wall.   
I licked my salty lips. I could use another rinse. These days were long, educational, and damn tiring.   
“You think Hauser is an interesting character? You should do a little research about his father.”  
“His father?”  
Violet, Bala, and the jailer rattled off all the information they thought necessary. They interrupted one another often, painting a coherent picture of the forefather of the man running the Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County.  
“Is he still alive?” I asked.   
Bala shook her head.   
“So why do I need to know this stuff?”   
She let her spoon drop.   
Violet piped up before Bala could say something. “Because we need to know everything about our enemy. Everything. Who knows what might be useful one day?”  
“I understand,” I said calmly. I still needed to learn to watch my words in front of Bala.  
“You know…” Bala’s eyes danced. “I’m teaching a class later today. You should stop by.” She gave me the time and location. I told her I would be there.   
“How’d he die?” I asked, cleaning the last bit of broccoli out of my bowl. “Hauser’s father. How’d he die?”   
“He perished on Isla del Cisne off the coast of Honduras sometime in the eighties,” the jailer said.  
I looked at Bala’s shoes.  
Reading the look on my face, Violet said, “How much of this is legend? How much is hearsay? We don’t know. We think it’s mostly true.”  
“Congratulations, by the way,” the jailer said, standing up slowly. One of his joints popped loudly. I think it was a hip.   
“Congratulations?” I asked.   
“We haven’t told him yet,” Violet said.   
Bala chuckled.   
Was he assuming I had accomplished my mission? “The hell are you talking about? I failed. I didn’t find a way to get the Senator, and my reconnaissance yielded little results. I got nothing.”  
“You haven’t failed at all. You’ve just eliminated one way of getting the asshole. In doing so you’ve contributed to the ultimate goal. And you’ve earned yourself a spot.”  
“A spot?”  
“That’s what the congratulations is for. You’re on tonight’s recon.”  
“Huh?”  
“Finish your chow and catch a nap while you can. Tonight’s gonna be a long one.” 

Post-nap, I walked the cold hallways down to Bala’s class. In recent days I had gotten better at navigating the depths of the harbor. This time I took only two wrong turns. The first room I entered was filled with maps. Nothing but maps. Tourist maps of Chicago, maps of dark fiber routes throughout the city, and building schematics covered every inch of wall. Wrong room. The next room was crammed with aluminum pipes and reams of hemp fabric. A lone glow-in-the-dark star struggled valiantly on the ceiling. I surfaced back into the hallway.  
The March air dove down my spine. It then detected the one part where my shirt wasn’t fully tucked in, and it bolted up the gap, nipping at my flanks. My skin crept. At first I dismissed it. Just the cold, I assured myself. But my flesh soon prickled all over. I tried to catch my breath. I spun around and peered down the dark hallway. A lone candle ten paces down flickered kindly. Walls can’t stop them. Nothing stops them. Who knows what kind of devices they’ve planted here? Maybe I’ll die quickly, walking by an artillery shell with a proximity fuse and POOF I’m a goner. And if the mines don’t get me, surely their infiltrators will. I hear the anarchists have only uncovered one mole in the past eight months. Others definitely lurk about. “We’re up against a lot, yeah. But we can do it. We’ve done it so far.” I tried to wrangle my negative thoughts. “It’s just my imagination,” I repeated again and again, though my words rang untrue. Enough. I double-timed it down the hall. My brisk pace whooshed against the candles as I passed. Their wicks nodded, burning strong in my wake.

“Stasi 101: The Beginnings of Electronic Surveillance,” I said, reading the chalk sign hanging from the metal door latch. I knocked lightly and walked inside. Bala nodded politely to me and continued with her lecture. Chairs were arranged in a circle and Bala was walking around the outside. A fire crackled in a humble, circular fireplace in the center of the room. It vented up through what looked like a repurposed overhead oven fan.   
“D.C. eavesdrops on domestic communications for national security purposes,” Bala argued.   
I was confused. I lingered by the door, observing.  
“They say it’s national security purposes, but we know that’s often not the case,” a young man argued back.   
“Correct. So it’s eavesdropping…” Her tone asked for other student participation. Her eyes roamed the seats.   
“Maybe to get a leg up in trade negotiations,” a young woman offered. Bala nodded.   
“Maybe to spy on a United Nations delegation,” Bala offered. “Maybe to monitor a group of activists, maybe to collect dirt on the head of a foreign oil company vacationing in Florida, maybe…”  
“Okay, okay. We get it,” the young woman joked.   
Bala laughed. She was at ease with her students. I couldn’t help but think: if I had interrupted Bala in a similar way, I’d have been tossed in the fire faster than I could’ve spelled S-T-I-N-G-R-A-Y.  
“So D.C. eavesdrops on domestic communications, regardless of the pretext. But in order to do so, they need to get permission from a judge.”   
“What judge?”   
“A judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”  
“The what?” the young man asked.  
The young female student took the lead. “In 1978, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, was signed into law. It established a legal regime that the U.S. government must follow when spying on foreign powers, their agents, and terrorism suspects.”  
“Thank you, Kelsey,” Bala said.   
“Even the wording is flexible,” Kelsey replied, trying to get one final word in.   
“What do you mean? Explain for the class.”  
“Well, the government can use the term ‘terrorism’ to go after all sorts of characters they don’t like—they don’t have to be actual terrorists, Carlos the Jackal types.”  
A plump boy with a face of a cherub raised his hand. Bala nodded at him welcomingly.  
“Give us an example or two, please,” he asked his peer.  
I read the chalkboard behind the cherubic boy while the female student mulled over her response. The cursive script read: Protecting national security and defending our homeland outweighs any passing claims of privacy inherent to the digital identifiers in question. Alleged intrusion into personal privacy has been found to be minimal. The government goes to extraordinary lengths to prosecute narrowly targeted searches and boasts a stellar track record of highly accurate results.  
The student made a clicking sound for a few seconds before firing off, “Eco-terrorists. Men and women of conscience who prioritize the dignity of their fellow creatures are often deemed eco-terrorists. It’s brutal.”  
“Excellent! Well said,” Bala applauded. “But we digress. We must stay on track. So D.C. gets permission from a judge with the FISA courts when it wants to eavesdrop on domestic communications. What role does the judge play?”  
I stepped forward and took a seat next to the knowledgeable female student.  
A different student chimed in. “The judge must affirm that the target is worthy, that the target is a suspected terrorist or likely an agent of a foreign power. And that the suspect is likely to use the means of electronic communications—email, phone number, encrypted app, whatever—that D.C. wants to tap. The judge must also certify that the suspect is violating U.S. law and intentionally conducting espionage activities on U.S. soil.”  
“Isn’t that just speculation?”  
“They’d disagree. But yes. It’s speculation backed up by a lot of paperwork and jargon.”  
“Speaking of jargon… I hate to nitpick, but I have a little question about the phrasing you use.”  
“Sure. One thing first: The government is allowed to have prior consultation with the judge before submitting the FISA application… D.C. would argue that this makes sure that the government doesn’t submit an application that gets denied. They frame the collusion with the judge—er, preliminary discussions with the judge—as saving time, effort, and ultimately taxpayer dollars.”  
“Oh, now they care about tax dollars?”  
The class laughed.  
“Sorry, someone had a question. Yeah, you, go ahead.”  
“You say Washington, D.C., does the eavesdropping, but that’s not actually the case. Most of the time it’s Fort Meade doing the eavesdropping.”  
Bala entered the circle and began stoking the fire with a particularly hardy stick. She spoke, “Yes. Yes, you’re correct. I use the metonym D.C. to refer to the federal government. And I fully acknowledge that there are various centers of power within the federal government, and that those who exercise authority often fall, geographically, outside of D.C.’s turf.”  
“Understood.”  
“But, for simplicity’s sake, I’d like to keep using the term ‘D.C.’, if that’s alright with you.”  
“Sounds good.”  
“A final point I’d like to make is that…” Bala thought while she leaned her stoker against the rim of the fireplace. “… There’s no adversarial process in a FISA court. The judge only hears what the intelligence agency tells him. That’s it.” She surveyed her class with her hands on her hips. “There’s a problem though.”  
“A problem?”  
“Ha! Many problems. The big one is that the FISA court is just a rubber stamp. The judge almost never turns down a wiretap request.” Bala surveyed the class. They looked eager but tired. “I think we’ll end on that note, since that about sums up today’s lesson.”  
The students packed up and departed quietly. They had much to digest.   
“Good job on your first day in class!” Bala commended.   
Why was she suddenly kind? “Thanks.”  
“What’d you think?”  
“It was good. Educational. I knew a little about the FISA courts, but I didn’t know that much. Do they even still use that stuff? Did they ever really? Didn’t they just collect it all? And now that it’s a full-blown oligarchy, shouldn’t they just dispense with the rubber stamps?”  
“Good question. I’d argue that the rubberstamps help keep the system going. They provide a patina of officialdom to the oppression.”  
I thought about it. “You argue well.”  
“I’ve got a homework assignment for you.”  
“You do?” I asked. “Ehhh… Is this about tonight’s operation?”   
Bala nodded mischievously. “No. Actually. Different.”  
“I really should try to grab another nap. The first one was good, but I think another one would put me right back on track.”  
“Another nap?! We ain’t got time to snooze. There’s a war out there!”   
“I know,” I argued. “I was out there all day yesterday.”   
“Then get out there all day tomorrow.”   
I huffed.   
Bala didn’t miss a beat. “Your homework assignment is to log onto the LeekNet. Violet will show you how. And study DARPA contracts. Take notes with the aim of describing how each contract might affect our struggle. Recommend countermeasures and procedures for us to put in place. Then you can nap.”  
“Is that all?” I joked.   
She wasn’t having it. “You’ll sleep when you’re dead. We all will.”  
Bala eyed the coals. She nodded intensely at the fireplace, perhaps convinced the coals would be okay unattended until the next class.


	10. Chapter 10

“WHAT WAS IT LIKE in there?” I asked as we exited the classroom, catching one last crackle from the fireplace before the door creaked shut.   
Bala led the way along a zigzag of corridors. “Keep up. We’re going the back way.”  
As we weaved through the dark, she holding the only candle, I wondered if she was going to answer my question. No moss glossed the stone walls this deep, but there was still a fresh smell, like soil after a spring rain. A steady drip accompanied our footsteps. Step, step, step, DRIP, step, step, step, DRIP. The creepy feeling I had experience earlier whispered along my spine, so I picked up the pace, ruining the step-drip cadence, and walked up to Bala’s side.  
She spoke suddenly. “Keep your eyes open in an oligarch jail. Don’t ask too many questions. Just be observant.”  
“How do you, you know, stay with it, stay sane?”  
“It’s hard.” She sighed. “It’s really hard. Sometimes I’d write letters.”  
“They gave you pen and paper in solitary?”   
“No, no,” Bala replied. “I’d write with my finger. On the concrete.”  
“Mm,” I hummed sympathetically.   
“Some marvelous compositions, if I do say myself,” Bala said, trying to raise some cheer. “Really.”  
I pursed my lips against the gloom.   
“So there’s no stimulation, you gotta keep your mind flowing, occupied, busy. When I wasn’t finding ways to occupy my mind, I’d work out.”  
“Were you able to see other prisoners? Was there any contact?”  
Bala smiled in the candlelight. “We found ways.”   
I took a moment to feel grateful for my present circumstances. Life was hard among anarchists, but they really did take care of their own.   
“You know those logs are harvested sustainably, right?” Bala asked.   
“What logs?” Realizing she was talking about the classroom fireplace, I jumped in and answered my own question. “Yeah.”  
“You sound depressed about it,” she observed. “It’s a good thing.”   
“It is,” I replied. “But why are we going through all the trouble to harvest sustainably, when the oligarch’s transnational capital razes a different rainforest every week?” Bala inhaled to reply when I added, “Acres upon acres.”  
“Mm,” Bala replied, adopting the same sympathetic hum I had used earlier. “It’s easy to let the depression overwhelm you.”  
“It is. How do you—”  
“Stay positive? I don’t. I stay detached. Focused and detached.” Bala said confidently.   
I got the feeling Bala had more wisdom, earned wisdom, stashed away. I wanted to ask for it, gently, but my curiosity about her time in prison came first.  
“How else did you keep your mind busy?” I asked. I was worried about my future.  
We rounded a bend.   
“Jeez… Lots of stuff, I’d do. I’d try to remember all of the countries and capitals in a given region, say Central America or sub-Saharan Africa. I’d try to draw maps in my mind, on the floor, on the walls… Hell, I’d even box the multiplication tables and try to recall them each morning. The good ones, the hard ones, the ones I never learned growing up. Like the thirteens… and the fourteens.” She sniffed. “I’d even try to remember the phone numbers of childhood friends. It’s amazing what the mind can think of when given a few tasks and a lot of time. I’d wake up some mornings—they wake you up at four AM, by the way—and bam, a phone number would be there, front and center in my mind.”  
“So you’d work on a bunch of tasks at once?”  
“Yeah, not too much, but enough to juggle some stuff. Enough to pass the time feeling like you’re making progress. I tell ya, those who do time—months, years—in solitary, I’ve got nothing but the utmost respect for them.”  
“They’re unreal,” I concurred.   
“Even before the oligarchy entrenched itself. The early twenty-first century, say. Solitary confinement was used throughout the U.S. prison-industrial complex.”  
“Any tips? For me, that is. In case I get rolled up one day.”   
“You know, that’s a good point. I should put something together, a little packet or something, on how to get through it.”   
“Off the top of your head,” I encouraged.  
“Off the top of my head… Keep your mouth shut at first. Learn by watching.” She stopped suddenly.  
“What is it?”   
“Here.” She handed me the candle, stepped right, and reached into the wall. I stepped to my left to shine the light at her task. Her face strained.   
CLANG! A ladder slammed to the ground behind me with a few bounces.   
Bala took the candle from me and ascended on three limbs. “Come.”  
“That could’ve hit me,” I complained.   
“Not even close.” She climbed faster while holding a candle than I did with my hands free. “Oh, and when traveling on a bus or in an airplane, when the guards strap you in, push out your gut as much as possible. That way the chains they strap over your abdomen aren’t too tight.”  
“Good thinking,” I said.   
The ladder poked up into another hallway, this one lighter and with hints of moss on the walls. She led me to the right. After a few paces we were back in the main room. The sight of the giant tree made me smile. I couldn’t help it. I tried to stifle my goofy look, but it was just so beautiful. I wanted to ask how it came to grow so deep underground, but Bala spoke up.  
“Back in the day, even when the oligarchs were on the rise, there would still be some semblance of process. Although the system itself was racist as hell and brutally oppressive, there was always a process.”  
“Like?”  
“Like, you know, probation, case managers, plea bargains, a clogged up court system. Shitty stuff, but such was the process.”  
I was pretty sure she wasn’t defending the process, but her choice of words left me confused. We rounded the great tree, passed through the kitchen, and headed down into the living quarters.   
“Oddly, some of the U.S. Marshals were decent folks.”  
“Decent?”  
“Well… it’s all relative.”  
Violet was reading on her cot in the far corner as we entered. A thick binder rested on her legs.  
“Some of the Task Force guards are heartless though,” Bala stated. “Real sinister fellows. Humanity was drained from them a long time ago.”  
“Have you ever been caught?” I asked Violet. “Locked up?”  
Violet turned the page, focused.  
Bala continued. “Intricate shit, their cruelty. One day they told prisoners in my wing that we’d have email access twice a week. Three of us accepted. We’d shuffle on down to a computer lab and log into this old email system. It had a real old school interface, almost like the old sixteen-bit PC operating systems. Anyway, we had trouble creating accounts, but it eventually worked.”  
I sat down on my cot. I liked listening to Bala. She had a lot to offer about the anarchist mindset. I untied my laces and sopped up her words. I laid back. Her voice was clear and crisp. Somehow each word snapped like brick on brick.  
“This went on for about a month, month and a half. I sent a few emails, nothing confidential, thankfully, just some kind notes to a few relatives. Only later on did we find out that the whole thing was a ruse.”  
I sat up. “Huh?”   
“Yeah. Just designed to get more information out of us.”  
“Shoot.”  
“Yeah, shoot.” Bala smiled. It looked almost unnatural on her face. “I fell for it, but thankfully I didn’t write anything incriminating in my emails. The only thing I imagine they got from me was a few relatives’ email addresses.”  
Violet closed the binder on her lap. “So was this scheme the guards’ doing or a private corporation?” Thinking, she opened and closed her jaw rapidly. Her teeth clacked. “Cuz, I mean, the guards wouldn’t know how to program or set up a fake email system, would they?”   
“Good point. No. But they were definitely in on it. I should have known the way one of them smiled as he led us down on the first day they announced the program.”  
“Have you contacted your relatives? The ones you emailed while inside?” I asked.  
Bala shook her head. “Not yet.”  
“You ready for tonight?” Violet asked me. She swung her legs over the side of the cot and stepped into a pair of high heels.   
I shook my head. “What’ll I need?”  
“Do you still have your gear from yesterday’s operation?”  
Is she just going to pretend that yesterday didn’t happen? I wondered. She had ordered over a dozen men to train guns at my head. That kind of thing didn’t happen every day. I thought we should at least discuss it. Or mention it. Then again, maybe it did happen every day here.   
“Yeah,” I answered. I nodded to the chest at the foot of my cot. “Where else would my gear be?”  
“I don’t know if you’d already returned it to the cage.”   
“Ahh. No, I’ve got it. What will I need?” I took a step and opened the chest.   
“What’ve you got for drinking shoes?”   
“Drinking shoes?”   
Violet laughed. “Just wear an old button down. Some slacks. Something comfortable.” She walked out. Her heels ticked against the ladder rungs.   
I yelled after her. “What’re you talking about?”   
“We’re in this together!”   
“She’s coming with me?” I asked Bala.   
“If it all works out well, she’ll definitely be coming,” Bala boomed. 

All kitted up in my bar clothes for our operation, I climbed to the kitchen and walked in on my new friends debating the route to take to the night’s objective. They sat around the first picnic table on the left. A modest spread of breads, cheeses, and jams lay before them. After listening to their argument for a while, I added my two cents.   
“I say you barrel straight through. The intel shop says the chances of getting shot at are one in twenty. But the payoff of arriving early is huge. More supplies, more ammo, more treats. Good potential value.” In an attempt to lighten the delivery, I wiggled my fingers like a storybook villain.   
“You can’t game this with some horseshit reasoning about potential value.” Violet’s friend—lanky and broad shouldered, with gloomy lips—said to me. He started off softly, but his voice got louder and louder as he neared the end of his rant. “This isn’t a damn speeding ticket. These are lives.” The word lives echoed off the starchy rafters. For a moment, the roots felt like metal beams. “Lives,” he whispered again. He hung his head dramatically and stomped off.   
“What was that about?” I wasn’t sure what to make of his performance, let alone his words.  
Violet leaned into me and explained kindly, sympathetically. It’s not about getting our fair share, not about hoarding more supplies at the expense of others. This humble lesson in anarchism struck me hard. I had shown my true nature. Not only was I accustomed to thinking greedily, but I had also argued forcefully for a poor decision.   
As I nibbled at a hard piece of bread, I went over my encounter with Violet’s friend in my mind. I came up with an example to prove my original point: The oligarchs charge the Task Force with setting up elaborate phishing operations throughout the city. These discrete antennae entice citizens who pass through a certain area to open a given advertisement or download a certain file onto their smartphones. When the citizen takes the bait, the Task Force then owns the citizen’s smartphone and all of the contents within. The oligarchs know that every smartphone is a treasure chest of incriminating data, so every person who takes the phishing bait is almost guaranteed to be blackmailed into cooperating with the Task Force. The ruling oligarchy might use the blackmailed person immediately or keep them as a long-term advantage to tap down the road. These operations had a downside. With a little legroom and a lot of perseverance the anarchists were often able to pinpoint the antenna and confiscate the oligarchy’s gear. The antennae provided the anarchists’ electronics shop with a decent cross-section of Task Force technology and capability. Sometimes, if tapped discretely, an antenna could give away the location of the nearest transmission station, the destruction of which would knock the oligarchy’s forces back a few weeks.   
I stood up and stretched, convinced that thinking about potential value wasn’t a terrible idea. I explained my reasoning to Violet and Bala. They encouraged me to shun traditional capitalist ways of thinking. And Bala stressed that thoughts of value shouldn’t be applied to every scenario. I sat back down, happy with the post-stretch warm tingle in my hamstrings.  
“These were the factors the oligarchs need to weigh when planning phishing ops,” Violet concluded.   
Bala picked up where Violet left off. “The oligarchs know how much a set of antennae costs. They know probability of a citizen taking their phishing lure. And they know the payoff of gaining access to a citizen’s phone.”  
I added, “Not to mention the domino effect of then being able to message that citizen’s contacts and make it look like it came from the citizen’s phone.”   
“Well said,” Bala complimented. “They also know the probability of an antenna becoming compromised and the probability of that antenna being used to pinpoint crucial oligarchy infrastructure. For a positive potential value, to use your vocabulary, the profit gained from phishing operations, in terms of citizens corrupted and intelligence gathered, must outweigh the combined cost of pinpointed antennae and compromised infrastructure.”  
“They crunch the numbers, and so far the antennae are still up throughout the city,” Violet concluded.   
I rested, unsure if we’d actually made any progress—intellectual, tactical, or strategic.   
Violet checked her watch. “Half an hour to showtime.” She yawned. “I should’ve napped.”  
“You think Hauser is operating tonight?” I asked.   
“Not according to our sources. He’s been spending a lot of time at Naval Support Activity Strough.”  
“Doing what?”   
“We’re not sure…” Violet replied.   
I got the feeling she knew more than she was letting on. “I’d like to see the file you’ve got on him when you get the chance.”  
Violet glanced at Bala. Bala closed her eyes.   
“I’d like to study him,” I explained. “I want to really know what we’re up against, especially if he’s our main enemy.”  
“No, no, no. That’s not it.” Bala was looking at the spread before her. With her wraith-like fingers she tapped the top of a reused jar of jam.  
I stared at her blankly.   
After a moment, she piped up. “Hauser is dangerous because he’s got the instinct. His entire adult life has been dedicated to honing and delivering violence. Many men and women have followed such a path. His instinct is what sets him apart. His instinct is what makes him dangerous.”  
Violet explained. “You can’t study instinct.”  
“So your file is thin?” I asked.  
“He works for the oligarchy. And they pay him handsomely.” Bala was ignoring my question. “He doesn’t do it for money, though. That’s just a perk of the job.   
“His allegiance is to the fight,” Violet added.  
“And his instincts make him the deadliest out there?” I asked.  
“He makes split-second decisions every day,” Violet continued. “He strategically shuns distraction. He deliberately limits emotion. He has parlayed his extensive experience into knowing when to fight, when to hold back, when to play a big hand, and when to fold to kick ass another day. That’s it. That’s your file.”  
“The rest, you know,” Bala said, still tapping the jar of jam.  
Violet picked up the cutting board and swept the crumbs into her shirt.   
“Do you think he’s scared of anarchism?” I asked suddenly.   
Violet stood up, cupping her t-shirt, and walked over to the compost pile in the corner.   
“She never wastes a crumb,” Bala noted, smiling appreciatively.   
Violet sat back down.   
I asked again. “Do you think he’s scared of us?” Nobody answered at first. It was as if I had asked about the meaning of life. “Well… do you?”  
Bala spoke up. “Do I think he sits around spinning tales about Violet or plotting our activities? No.” She leaned forward, mouth ajar, and looked away, like she was going to continue speaking. But she soon leaned back and tossed a nod in Violet’s direction.  
“Me?” Violet asked. “No. I don’t think so. I don’t know. But I do think he’s thorough. Maybe he’s got a healthy fear of us. He’d be foolish not to. A healthy fear might serve as motivation. Keep him on his toes, you know?”  
“Have you learned the night’s lesson?” Bala asked.   
I shook my head, ready for some condescension. “Don’t misapply modeling games to real-life situations?” I guessed.  
Bala explained slowly and kindly. “That lesson works both ways.”  
“What do you mean?”   
“I mean the Task Force applies computer models, algorithms, and potential value to try to figure out all sorts of rebel activity.”  
“Like?”   
“Pick any major war corporation. There are even a number of boutique corporations that specialize in using information technology to map and predict anarchist behavior. Lately, one out of Rome, New York, one out of Cambridge, Mass, and another out of Fairfax, Virginia, have joined forces to sell such technology to the Task Force.”   
“Has the Task Force purchased it?”   
“We don’t know. We think so.”  
“You’re not worried?” I asked.  
Bala shook her head, a gnarled grin gaining greater ground on her face with each sweep of her chin. “There’s too much beautiful anarchy for Hauser to effectively apply these war industry models.”  
“And I think that’s precisely what scares him,” I said. As I saw it, there were a few relevant factors that could change a battle’s outcome. Like, well, the number of people in a given district during a specific operation. Given extreme uncertainty, does the Task Force corral the people, wait for another time, or launch the op anyway? Though I acknowledged Bala’s confidence, anarchists had to tread carefully when getting into this thinking; Real life doesn’t offer us neat-ass probability like we’d find in a textbook or the mind that crafts algorithms. Hauser knows this, intuitively if not consciously. He knows he’d never have enough info to determine the odds accurately. Hauser’ll accept risk, but he won’t embrace uncertainty.   
We all sat in silence for a bit. I liked the silence. It seemed like, despite our disagreements, we were all on the same page, chewing over the situation and coming up with new approaches. Our disagreements ended up helping us. If someone came up with an idea, he or she had better be able to defend it well. Lives were on the line. The possibility of a better tomorrow was on the line as well. These anarchists never forgot that. That thought was always with them, day and night.  
“I have to finish getting dressed.” Violet stood up. “See you at the exit, by our doormen, in ten minutes.”  
“Well I don’t know if this’ll make any sense, but I’m putting all my money on the anarchist horse,” I concluded.  
“The anarchist horse?” Bala laughed.   
“What kind of breed is an anarchist horse?” Violet asked, walking away.  
“An Icelandic horse?” Bala offered rapidly.   
“You know horses?” I deduced.   
Violet disappeared behind the cooks’ table.   
Bala shrugged evasively. “The Icelandic usually lives a long time and is tough as nails.”  
Intrigued by her knowledge, I asked, “What did you do in your past life, you know, before all this?”  
Bala tsk-tsked me. “I’m putting all my money on the Icelandic anarchist horse, then.”  
“Why?”  
“Well, for starters, nobody bet on us when the oligarchy first cracked down,” Bala recounted. “They all counted us out. And we’re still the underdog. The magnitude of our ultimate victory matters more than winning many individual battles.”  
“Victory in the whole war,” I suggested.  
“Exactly. The magnitude of our victory in the war matters more than the frequency of our wins in individual battles,” she revised.   
I stood up.   
“Good luck tonight,” Bala wished. She offered me her hand.   
I shook it eagerly. I liked when she openly considered me part of the team.

After the meal I stopped by the intel office. There, I scrubbed my person of any identifying papers. I swapped my wallet for a prepared one. My pocket lint was examined and altered. My old wallet, discarded pocket lint, and old government ID cards all went in a reusable bag inside a little cubby. The intel chief stopped me on the way out and insisted on a more thorough scrub. I told her I had long ago stripped my garments of any labels or clothing tags. She demanded a visual. I didn’t blame her. She was just doing her job and she was damn thorough at it.   
I couldn’t help but be continually impressed with the anarchists. They were practical, methodical, and efficient in their approach to mission planning and operations. Their emphasis on individuality and non-hierarchical principles only strengthened their stern, systematic, thorough approach. For years the oligarchy had leveraged the U.S. film industry to produce slick films praising the military, films always full of self-importance, pomp, and braggadocio. The anarchists were the exact opposite. Strict and thorough, they were a determined bunch.  
Violet and I were dropped off several blocks from the bar. A cold fog accompanied us. Violet was walking slowly, adjusting gradually to the high heels. As my thighs sliced through the fog, an occasional wisp would float up and part around my face. I loved it. The puffs of fog refreshed me. I was excited and a bit nervous as to how the night would play out. My role in the night’s mission was to keep watch and drink in the corner, like so many did nowadays. I tried to rally my nerves by engaging Violet in a little battle of the minds. She was speaking about espionage. Back and forth we went.  
“Their machine is beastly, costly,” I noted.  
“But victory can be achieved, the tide turned, in a matter of hours, a day, even,” she said, buoyantly.   
“While remaining aware,” I cautioned. My toe kicked some discarded resource. It skidded across the pavement.   
“Always aware.”  
The register we had adopted hit me as a little conceited, but it fit our mood well. We’d need any edge we could get.  
“And that is where foresight is key,” I proposed.   
We crossed a desolate street.   
“Foresight informed by study and strong intelligence,” she added. She lightly punched a brick wall as we connected with the other side of the street.  
“Both the espionage kind and the kind earned through frequently striving to improve oneself.” I had read that on my last trip to my favorite library, which felt like ages ago. Would the librarian even let me in now?  
“While we loathe those who might betray our ranks, we embrace those who betray the enemy’s.”  
I shrugged at the contradiction. Part of me wanted to consider those who roamed our ranks, but I immediately shook that thought out of mind.   
As if sensing my hesitancy, Violet offered, “Our counterintelligence apparatus is good. Deep.” I nodded and forced a smile. “They’re dedicated to secrecy and reward the spies well,” Violet continued. “They sift through information with patience. They are upfront, creative, and delicate in their ways.”   
We passed a group of men huddling around a small fire, which flared up from the pavement like a devil’s belch. Violet nodded to the men. They nodded back, firmly. We reviewed the arsenal of notes she had stored in her mind: her target’s likes and dislikes distilled from his recent pornographic website browsing history, his family history, the blueprints of his apartment, and the fastest egress if events got dicey. Violet had been at this for weeks, showing up at this tavern again and again in the hope of gradually gaining her target’s trust. The clock was winding down. She knew it. I could see it on her face. She simply didn’t have much time left; the anarchists needed the effects of this operation as soon as possible.  
“Have you ever spent any time in counterintelligence?” I asked.  
Violet paused to adjust her heel. She balanced against my shoulder. “Mmm,” she confirmed. “I worked a doorman gig once. It was a lot harder than I had thought it would be, but very rewarding. I was in the thick, just in the zone. I got a converted spy to…” She trailed off.  
“Who said that?” I asked.  
“Huh? One block. See the awning?”  
“Yes. Who said ‘converted spy’? Where have I heard that before?”  
“Sun Tzu,” Violet stated.   
“Ah, yes. Pentagon pencil pushers love quoting him.”   
Violet laughed. “True,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean Sun Tzu is wrong.”  
I laughed through my nose. “Fair enough.”  
We turned and entered the bar.


	11. Chapter 11

POSITIONED AT THE FAR corner of the bar, Violet hiked up her dress—‘dishtowel couture’ she called it, a nod to the terrycloth fabric—and slid her right leg down to a different peg on the barstool. She’d told me she liked the short number because it accentuated her favorite assets. Now her thick thigh was draped right in the sightline of anyone who entered.   
“This overpaid asshole!” the man to her right yelled, displeased with how the basketball game was progressing on the one-millimeter flat-screen upon the wall. “The refs give him no respect.”  
“Well, Tate’s guarding him,” his buddy observed. “And Tate always gets the benefit of the doubt.”  
“Always. Every day. Though he’s more of a perimeter player.”  
“The refs don’t mess with the greats. And he, my friend, is the best the game has to offer.”  
“Sick analysis,” the friend mocked.  
“What’d you even do last night?”  
“Don’t remember shit.”  
“Sounds like a solid night.”  
They clinked glasses. “Cheers!”  
One of the men demanded that the bartender turn up the volume on the game. The bartender nodded patiently and complied. I watched from a small circular table along the back wall.   
Violet swallowed hard. Patience was the rebel’s righteousness. The sports fans’ mentality, clueless and content, washed over her. She was a boulder along a rough shore. Men like those around her sucked up government and corporate propaganda and vomited it at each other like binge-drinking coeds. When they weren’t spouting corporate talking points or government PR, they were arguing over their favorite sports teams.   
I understood the temptation, though the system was ridiculous. The players on their favorite teams had no allegiance; they only went where the general managers dealt them or where they could find the crispest millions. The composition of teams changed each year. Only the front office stayed in place for more than a few seasons. Were these people cheering for their favorite general manager? I chuckled into my glass.  
The game gave way to a lengthy commercial break. Ambient music floated from the flat-screen, competing with the rabble coming from the pool tables in the back of the room and the riff-raff at the bar. “Jeans that fit your defiance,” boasted an Italian clothing brand, whose product was made in China and marketed to the wealthy youth of aspiring oligarchs. “Sleeker, faster, more powerful.” The latest smartphone glimmered. “Brash, bold, and cut for your butt,” the finest clothing retailer boasted. “Seamless design and a larger aperture for your engine,” a husky voice averred as a mid-size luxury automobile drove to the stars.   
Violet ordered another drink from the bartender. I could tell she liked him. He gave off the stoic air of an ancient tree. Nothing seemed to rattle him. With a consistently gentle cadence he took orders, poured and organized the well liquors, counseled miserable husbands, and diffused fights. Perhaps his phlegmatic approach came from decades behind the bar or decades raising a rowdy family. Or both. Who knew?  
The capitalist television blared. The game had returned, though Violet always kept her periphery on the main doorway. “Spins away… Still on his feet… Bombs one from beyond the arch… Drained! Los Angeles in the lead heading into the half!” I wondered about the Los Angeles anarchists. I had heard amazing things. “This kid’s got the intangibles that we talked about in the preseason!” Violet recently told me she had not heard from their Boyle Heights envoy in months. “Right you are, Bob. And look at the pick his teammates set him up with. Look at the help he gets. Teamwork right there. Teamwork.”  
Violet’s target entered. He was more rumpled than I had imagined; the anarchist file on him was more or less accurate, though I bet Violet would add a few notes in the margins when she was in the harbor next. He wore a sky blue polo shirt with a frayed white undershirt poking out beneath the collar. His pant legs draped over his sneakers, which were a darker shade of blue. The heels of his shoes ground his cuffs against the floor as he stepped forward. Violet let him catch her looking at him. The door hit him on the right shoulder as he scanned the bar for an open stool. He handed his ID to the bouncer. Her target’s neck, feeble as it was, was about the same gauge as the bouncer’s wrists. The bouncer, familiar with his meek presence, quickly let him pass. Violet’s target took a seat at the far end of the bar.   
Two women gabbed loudly at the table behind her. Low-level oligarchs, or wives of low-level oligarchs, I supposed, on the early stages of a pub-crawl.   
“I am so grateful.” The high pitch pierced the hubbub. “Cheers!”  
“Cheers! To your new home!”   
“You know, my storage unit is five by ten.”  
“It’s full?”  
“It’s full.”  
“I mean it’s not huge, but it’s a lotta stuff.”  
“Probably about this size?” She gestured her arms at ninety degrees, angling off part of the bar.   
“Yeah, just about.”  
“I forgot to pack the heavy-duty vacuum from the garage. I’ve still got some cleanup to do.”  
“Be careful about the cleaning people. They’re slime.”  
“They can be. The only thing I might need is curtains.”  
“Blinds, maybe.”  
“I’m all about open.”  
“Nah, you don’t want too much window.”  
“But all those electric wires are showing in front of that one pillar.”  
“Good point.”  
“I just love those three openings.”  
“You did such a great job with the renovations.”  
“I want a big mirror, so it’ll be above the portrait.”  
“Mmmmm, put some plants over there too. And you’ve got that closet on the way up the stairs. That alcove.”  
“I’m going to put the rain chains there.”  
“There’re a couple by the maple tree by the pond.”  
“The big rock that stands in the front of the house. I’m gonna take that rock.”  
“I’m so glad you’re happy.”  
“It’s been a long time.”  
“I am so aware right now, about myself. I used to give so much of my power away.”  
“You left on good terms though.”  
“And a good beginning.”  
Glasses clinked.  
I tuned them out. On my way to the restroom I heard Violet whisper, “The supporting cast. They’re often just as bad as the oligarchs themselves.” Her breath shined frosty against her glass. 

Throughout the night Violet fended off advances from several men and one woman. All of the pests seemed lonely or confused. All had a little liquid courage in them. Even if they were her type, the mission always came first. She had no luxury for romance, let alone love or children. The cause was her life. It would have been irresponsible to have children, she’d argue. Kids would have forced her to take her eye off the ball. And just when it mattered the most.   
She caught her target looking at her a few times. He quickly looked away, returning his eyes to his drink or to the flat-screen airing the game on the wall. She was able to slip him a smile once, right before he looked down in search of the glass’ salted rim. He blushed into the frozen concoction. His warm hands left slick prints on the frosted tumbler. And so the dance progressed.   
His personality wouldn’t take well to a hard approach. Such was her intuition, and such was her training. Consider it a recipe, she had told a recent class of trainees as they reviewed his character type on the chalkboard. One part attire. One part eye contact. Two parts waiting. One part gentle words.   
The dance developed throughout the night. It was crucial that he initiate contact. She saw him taking in more and more of the game. She noted when he cheered and for whom he rooted.  
Half an hour before last call Violet sat up. She placed a big bill on the bar.   
“Hi.”   
Violet looked up. Her target was standing next to her, though his eyes were on the floor.   
“I’m PO-pe,” her target said, his voice cracking.  
Pope was the final piece in a looming puzzle. If the anarchists got him, they’d have all the pieces to arrange their attack. Pope worked as a base support official at Naval Support Activity Strough, the main Task Force stronghold. His focus was information technology, IT. The corporation he worked for, Grace IT, serviced the internet café program across the installation. By providing the installation with commercial internet connectivity, he had access to Task Force members’ social media accounts, online banking, email, and other services. All of their information went through his company’s servers.   
“Well hello, Pope,” she replied.  
“I…”  
“Isn’t it time to go?” she said, her tone rueful. She knew from Pope’s file that he always regretted not being more forward. He rued what decades of sedentary work had done to his body and social skills. She played to his weaknesses, betting he was on the verge of finally seizing the initiative after having downed so many frosty swills.   
The bartender returned with her change, which he stacked in descending order by denomination from left to right.   
“Can I…” Pope trailed off.  
“Walk me home? How ‘bout I walk you home?” She scooped up her change, leaving a generous tip. With a flick of her jaw she gestured for her target to follow.   
Pope placed his drink on the bar and walked behind her into the night. The bartender smiled as he picked up the man’s drink. The remaining mixture swished up one side of the glass before the bartender poured it down the sink and stuck the glass face down in the dishwasher. Moments later I walked outside, pretending to fumble for a cigarette as I scanned for the pair. The spring chill hit me at multiple angles, a welcomed relief from the stuffy air in the bar. It occurred to me while I followed them at a distance why I had been chosen for this task. There was nobody better at street navigation or tailing someone discretely. Little old homeless me, master of the streets.

I slept well behind a dumpster in an alley a few blocks from Pope’s apartment. I woke up early, rolled over, and checked my analogue wind-up watch. Less than an hour until dawn. A cat’s vertical pupils stared at me. She was a big girl. She was a few feet away, settled under the end of the dumpster, kindly ignoring the liquid dripping from its rusted corner. We both perked up. Someone was coming up the alley. Peering out from my nook, I saw Violet walking up the middle of the alley as if she didn’t have a care in the world. I relaxed and sat back, which seemed to help the cat relax too. I admired how cats had thrived in this environment. They hunted for themselves. They were innovative. And they reproduced well. They’d probably last longer than humans. So be it. I closed my eyes.  
“Psst… Psst.” Violet’s voice would have been a decent alarm clock if she hadn’t ruined it by nudging me in the ribs with her pointy high heels.   
“Take it easy,” I grumbled, rolling over and pushing myself off the damp tarp. I stood up and stretched my calves before I walked out from behind the dumpster.   
Violet was already at the entrance to the alleyway. I looked skyward. Dawn was eager to arrive. I walked down the alleyway to meet her. The cat followed me.  
“Is this your first walk of shame?”  
Violet stifled a laugh.   
We walked in silence for several blocks, keeping mostly to alleyways and the L, the cat still keeping pace. A chirping bird cheered us on.   
As we fumbled with a heavy grate together, I asked, “Why’d you help me out back there? I still don’t understand.”  
“Back where?” Violet replied, grunting.  
“In the park, days ago. You saved me. But why?” Had it really been days ago? Time was flying. I shrugged.   
“I thought I told you,” she whispered, lowering the grate slowly. Her strength was impressive.  
“You never gave me a straight answer.”  
“I guess…” She inhaled deeply. “I guess when living without greed or corporate aggression, humans are naturally pretty kind.”  
I smiled and I made sure she saw it.   
“There’s more,” she went on. “We need to expand our ranks. We die if we stagnate. We lose steam if we isolate. We gotta grow.” She smiled, but without it reaching her crow’s feet. She was focused on the task at hand. She led me across an abandoned street. A thick skin of junk mail, pine needles, and plastic bottles allowed only a few patches of pavement to show. I wondered how such debris would affect future plant growth.   
“Did you sleep with him?” I asked with a wince.   
“None of your business,” came her flat reply as she dove into the far-side shrubbery.   
I doubt she had slept with him, but at the same time I knew she’d do anything for the cause. She tried to pick up a manhole cover amid witch hazel, hydrangea, and a dark dogwood.   
“Help me with this,” she ordered. I plucked a twig from my hair and followed her orders. I smiled at the cat as we strained to move the manhole cover. The cat smiled back, cutting her smile short in order to shoot her ears skyward. Violet and I put down the cover. The cat crouched, straining her senses, and then darted away.  
The ground roiled and bounced. All I could do was cover my ears and go prone before the shockwave stampeded over us.


	12. Chapter 12

Dusty and confused, I shook my head. How much time had passed? I didn’t know. The deepening fade of helicopter rotors registered with me as I stumbled to my feet. Where was the helicopter? Where was it going? Returning to base? Where had they been?   
“Violet?” I whispered as the dust cleared. I crouched, realizing I was fairly exposed in this crop of shrubs. “Violet?” I asked, a little louder this time. The chirp of a lone bird was the only reply I heard. Violet must have gone underground, I assumed.   
I ran over my options: stay here, topside, hoping Violet would make contact with me again, or do my best to find the anarchist harbor. Not wanting to risk succumbing to the Task Force’s bombsights, I chose the latter. I headed down through the manhole.   
Grit coated the damp rungs of the ladder. I was fairly certain I could see where Violet had placed her hands and feet. The ladder dropped onto the top of an elevated catwalk. I recognized the area. Retracing my steps, I walked south-southeast. A bend loomed ahead. I took the bend to the south and after twenty meters hopped into the waters below. Knee-deep, the waters were relatively calm. Good. The ‘tides’ were on my side. I walked for a bit and then pulled myself up into a wide access pipe and made my way east towards the adjacent tunnel, pausing halfway through to carefully raise a vertical grate. Placed there by the anarchists, the grate helped keep out the riff-raff. A car battery concealed behind two bricks electrified three quarters of the grate. Only the anarchists and a few allies knew where to touch the grate to avoid getting zapped. It was a simple but effective deterrent. One of many. With the grate behind me, I crawled the rest of the way through the pipe and looked out the far end. The scenery stunned me. I was expecting a tight subway tunnel rimmed with blast barriers, the kind you’d see buttressing U.S. military bases overseas or Task Force checkpoints at home. Instead, a fresh tunnel cut right through the subway track, northwest to southeast!  
I made sure to keep my head concealed in the pipe as best I could while I looked around the area. Sediment and small rocks were still dripping from the walls and ceiling of the fresh tunnel below. The entire diameter of the tunnel was grooved, like the inside of a rifle barrel. Something had carved this tunnel. Something massive. For minute after minute I waited and listened. No rumble. No vibration. Nothing but a steady drip. I emerged from the pipe.   
Dropping to my hands and knees, I waited, listened, and looked. I then scampered to the edge of the wall where the subway tunnel met the freshly carved bore. I looked northwest up the new tunnel, but I couldn’t see more than a few meters deep. What could have done this? I feared the worst. I feared the Tactical Machinery Group, the unit charged with mapping, finding, and destroying anarchist underground facilities. I then stole a glance down the tunnel, southeast. Same thing. Whatever had carved this tunnel was no longer in the area. I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I just had—.  
A hand grabbed my mouth and yanked me backwards into the shadows.  
I struggled but the attacker’s legs wrapped around me, pulling me to the soppy ground.   
“Always cover your ass,” Violet instructed me, releasing me from her vise. She helped me stand up.   
“Lesson learned,” I conceded.   
“Like their handiwork?” she asked, squatting back down, bouncing her bare heels off her buttocks.   
“I don’t get it,” I complained. “I thought TMG didn’t have the technical expertise to pull this off.” The technological challenges TMG faced accessing anarchist sanctuaries were steep: a variety of sources, including many traditional types of electronic communication, often interfered with existing techniques of peering underground, including ground penetrating radar; low-visibility underground, limited access, and difficult egress put Task Force mercenaries and grunts at a distinct disadvantage; reduced situational awareness would inevitably result from operating in tricky enemy territory; underground terrain was unpredictable and unmapped; and various types of rock, sediment, and booby traps were expected to hinder any Task Force incursion.   
“If you throw enough money, people, time, and materiel at something, you’re bound to figure it out sooner or later,” Violet replied, exasperated. TMG also had several advantages, Violet explained. Firstly, they had reams of histories upon which to draw: oral and video histories of Vietnam tunnel rats; techniques and procedures for finding and evaluating underground weapons caches in Iraq; tactics for tunneling in the mountains of Afghanistan; U.S. war industry partnerships with the Zionist regime’s tunneling operations in Palestine; and, of course, nearly unlimited funding.  
“Do you think they’re fully operational? Or are they just probing?”   
“I don’t know. Our most recent report says it doesn’t look good. For us.” She itemized some of TMG’s most recent technological achievements: high performance in low-light conditions; on-demand, push-button mapping to an unknown depth; high-definition screen resolution; a simple data link feature that allowed rapid communication with and among aircraft navigators; sensors able to perform in inclement weather; and set-and-forget procedures requiring minimal adjustment during the course of an operation. The technology was also largely compatible with existing distributed common ground systems, computers that collected and disseminated pictures and information across U.S. Northern Command. Task Force representatives loved it. They even held a small ceremony when TMG representatives arrived up north at Naval Support Activity Strough.  
“Shit.” It was all I could say.   
Violet reconsidered. “Judging by the path of this new tunnel and the location they dropped that bomb, I’d say they’re in more of a search mode.”  
“Whew. Maybe they’re testing your responses, poking the bear and seeing how it reacts,” I offered.  
“Maybe,” she whispered. “Maybe. We should return to the harbor. I don’t like being in the semi-open like this.”  
I wanted to ask what we were going to do if the harbor was no more, but I swallowed my question and followed Violet’s lead.

Violet’s harbor was unscathed. Those anarchists would live to fight another day. But security was extra tight. As we approached the harbor it became clear that anarchist patrols had been doubled and fortifications increased. I read fright on the anarchists’ faces. Once inside I hit the showers while Violet went straight to the armory. I scrubbed up sluggishly, but methodically. My breath turned to vapor in the dampness.  
Bala was changing clothes in the adjacent sleeping quarters. “What do you know about TMG?” she asked. Her voice easily echoed into the shower room.  
“Not much,” I replied. “But Violet filled me in some.”  
“Do you know the true nature of what we’re up against?”   
“It’s not looking good,” I said slowly, trying not to sound too melancholy.   
It was then that she dropped a bombshell of her own: radio reports indicated that TMG had taken out a different anarchist harbor.   
“Nearby?” I asked.  
“In the neighborhood, you could say,” Bala said, sparing no mystery. The results of the attack were brutal. Initial reports indicated that the Task Force had deployed an air-ground squadron. Twelve aircraft—four fighter escorts, four tactical bombers, and four helicopter gunships—rapidly searched for and mapped a good portion of underground facilities within the Loop, facilities that belonged to all sorts of rebels, not just anarchists. Everything was fair game, including manmade tunnels, municipal infrastructure, and mass transit. They relayed their findings to a ground component, some of the most competent grunts from the Department of Homeland Security and the Task Force who were then able to navigate effectively and mop up any of the rebel roaches that might have been able to flee the squadron’s bombing run. One underground anarchist sanctuary was destroyed. Two sanctuaries had close calls. The Task Force officers were patient. They had observed patterns of life in and around the suspected anarchist sanctuary. From what Bala could tell, they waited seventy-two hours, built up a decent picture, and then attacked. A twelfth-generation bunker buster bomb killed some anarchists in their sleep. Lungs burned just before bodies combusted.   
I muttered to myself.  
“Some died walking to the shower. Some died sitting down to a warm meal. But all died within two heartbeats,” Bala described from just beyond the doorway.  
“When was Violet going to tell me?”   
“I doubt she knew when she met up with you. But she damn sure knows now.”  
“I can’t take it,” I complained. I rinsed off and just stood there, staring at the vapor of my breath.   
“It could be worse.” It was then that Bala began sharing with me the story of a family’s struggles during the early battles of the revolution, when the oligarchy cracked down on peaceful protests, lashing the crowds with machine guns, mortars, and missiles. She referred to the matriarch as the Fuller Park Mama. I appreciated Bala taking the time to educate me.  
“The city was beaten up. Loss had stabbed everyone. We had all lost a cousin, a sibling, or a parent by that point. But the Fuller Park Mama, her personal loss astounded us all.”  
I listened intently, tuning out the chill on my wet skin.   
Shortly after the Task Force was officially formed, it launched Operation Freedom Sting. They hit Fuller Park and Englewood the worst. On day two of the operation, a Friday, Mama received news that her daughter had been killed on Thirty-First Street Beach—the fifth child Mama had lost over the course of six months. Details of the murder were sketchy and the body was never recovered. The young woman who delivered the news told Mama that a Task Force sniper had killed her daughter, Paula Leroy, but Bala believed the daughter had died under other circumstances.   
It had been a tradition that the extended family gather at Mama’s house Friday evenings and relax together by the fire. Prior to the oligarch offensive, the living room would have been bustling and the kitchen ground zero of the family’s happiness. But the living room was nearly empty on the Friday night that Mama received the news. The kitchen, cold. Most extended family stayed away; walking on the open street past curfew was a death summons. Some had fled the city, trying their luck in other oligarchy territories.  
“All together Moussa, Paula Leroy, Jeffrey, Daniela, and… Monroe.”  
I got the distinct impression that Bala had known this family. But, having learned my lesson about hasty questions in front of Bala, I kept my mouth shut. Maybe I’d ask later. Mouth shut, I learned of the children’s demise.   
“Moussa stepped on a land mine outside Soldier Field. Paula, you know about. Jeffrey was killed in the Roosevelt Road hotel battles. His body was dumped in the river. Daniela was killed placing a mine in front of an armored personnel carrier. The chain gun ripped her to shreds. She was dedicated to the mission until the end; the mine disabled the vehicle. Its occupants were burned alive.”  
“And Monroe?” I asked, shaking out my hair.  
“Depends who you ask.” Bala pulled a knife from the sheath hanging on her belt. “Some say he fell ill. Case of the grippe, they say. Other say he was tortured to death.”  
“Which theory do you subscribe to?” I was curious. Professionally curious.   
“He was tortured. The flu doesn’t purple a man’s ribs like that.” Bala re-sheathed the knife. A fine inscription trailed along the bottom edge of the scabbard, but I didn’t get a good look at it.   
“She’s a symbol of our suffering.”  
I weighed Bala’s choice of words as I toweled off.   
“Mothers always get it the worst,” I consoled. “They worry to death about their daughters and sons when they’re alive. Then death comes and they worry to death on another level.” I could have been more poetic with my phrasing, but it was the best I had at the time. Oddly, my words seemed to pep up Bala. She smiled, this time friendly. I asked, “Are there any sons left? Any daughters?” I exited the shower room.  
“None.”  
Many questions came to mind. As I began getting dressed I asked, “Why do you think that the daughter, Paula Leroy, was not killed by a sniper?”   
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said, vigorously scrubbing her scalp with boney fingers. “There were no valuable territorial gains there for the Task Force at the time. And there were no good sniper hides near where she was allegedly gunned down. And this was before the Task Force was doing their clear, hold, and build bullshit. So what gives? Also, nobody I talked to then had any idea of an operation going on in that area that day. It just didn’t add up.”  
“Maybe she was part of a small unit, an autonomous op?”   
“Maybe.”  
“So what happened to the Fuller Park Mama? Is she…”  
“She’s no longer with us.”  
“May I ask…?”  
“I wish you didn’t.” Bala then reconsidered. “She died a month to the day after her fifth child was taken from her. The satchel, containing a thermobaric device, sucked up and burned all of the oxygen… It was…” Bala grinded her teeth. She shook her head. “Good to go?!” she asked.  
I nodded. All changed, I stepped out from behind the partition. I felt good all cleaned up. I, too, did my best to learn from Bala’s story and move on. “I imagine this is what oligarchs feel like getting all dolled up for a night on the town. Dinner and the theater?” I chuckled nervously.  
“Death waits…” Bala muttered, walking away.   
She was right. Nobody said it out loud, but it was only a matter of time before the TMG pinpointed the harbor and the Task Force stormed the place with the full might of their corporate arsenal.   
This was the first thought on my mind the next morning after a night of poor sleep. In addition to targeting Fuller Park, the Task Force was now supplementing its tunnel operations by increasing surveillance, deploying night raids to keep the population passive, and trying to map patterns of life. All tactics, techniques, and procedures had been developed during the initial War on Terror in the early twenty-first century.  
When I picked up my head from the pillow I thought about the instructor at the range and how pleased he was with my progress. Violet told me as much, which made me smile. She seemed content with me spending much of my time in the anarchist harbor. I guess I had passed her tests and proven my mettle.  
“Where’s that homework?” Bala challenged at breakfast.   
“It’s coming, it’s coming.” Recent events had put any homework on the back burner.   
“This afternoon, meet us in my classroom. We’ve got a seminar. You’ll present your findings at the end of class, yeah?”  
I nodded.  
“Think you can find the classroom again?”  
“I think so.” I sniffed.   
“And how much time will you need?”  
I hadn’t sorted my notes, let alone practiced a formal presentation. I guessed. “Half an hour.”  
“Perfect. See you then.” And she was gone. 

I arrived early. The fire was burning, small and fierce; Bala had been in the classroom for a while. She was hunched over a student, giving assistance. She looked up from her huddle and signaled for me to wait one moment. I stayed put in the doorway.   
Bala soon stood up. Beads of sweat ran down lines of worry on the student’s face. Bala instructed, “No. No. You must be careful. Naval Support Activity, NSA, is not the same as National Security Agency.”  
The student started erasing furiously.   
“It’s okay. It’s okay. We all make that mistake.”  
The student rubbed her puffy eyes with the palms of her hands and refocused. Bala patted her on the back and waved me in. She greeted me with a firm handshake as I stepped into the class. One other student, sitting to the immediate left of the door, was hard at work on her notes. I took a seat by the near wall, close to the blackboard.   
“Today’s perfect. Two other students will be presenting their research projects as well.” Bala emphasized that these students were assigned homework as a response to recent events, to heavy losses among allied anarchist factions. She maintained a cheery disposition, despite recalling the losses.  
I gulped. “Sounds good.” I buried my face in my notes until class started.   
Class soon began. It was a full house. I recognized a few faces from my last time there.  
The first presenter stood up when prompted. She was a sturdy stringbean of a student. She wore jean shorts and a black t-shirt. She ran her hand through her buzzed black hair. She had hard bones. She looked like she could take a punch, and was ready to scrap at the drop of a hat. I wondered if her intellect would match.  
“When faced with our dispersed, non-hierarchical operations, the Pentagon threw its best minds at the problem: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA’s first stab at us focused on bolstering their drone game. Collaborative Operations in Anarchist Limits. COAL, they called it. It was a software upgrade to be used on their existing fleet of drones.” Indiscriminate in their munitions and nearly always overhead, drones had long terrified the citizens of Chicago. “Say they’ve got multiple unmanned, un-womanned, vehicles flying around above the city. What problems might they face?” the presenter asked.  
Hands shot up.   
“They’d need to de-conflict the airspace. Can’t have all their drones crashing into one another, can we?” The student laughed.  
“Good. What else?” She called on another student.   
“They’re big on setting the mission parameters ahead of time, so they can sit back and just monitor how things go. They’re still in the loop, but they aren’t always on the controls, you see?”   
“Good. And what problems might that cause?”  
The student replied, tapping her pencil on the desk. “Multi-vehicle autonomy is difficult to monitor and, if one of the drones faces an unforeseen problem, how will the other drones react?”  
“Good! So their software upgrade known as COAL was designed to help with exactly that: automatic rerouting around unforeseen problems, like anarchists or other anti-oligarch factions suddenly turning on electronic warfare batteries.”  
They had electronic warfare batteries? Damn.  
The presenter continued. “COAL helps with mid-flight tasking, moving a fleet of drones around while keeping an eye on the ball.”  
Bala interrupted, “Where did they test this type of technology? Did they test locally around our airspace?”  
“No,” the presenter replied quickly. “They tested it far from here. At China Lake in California.”  
Bala nodded and leaned back against the corner wall.   
“You’re probably wondering how we’re attacking this problem,” the presenter stated. “Well, that’s where my research hit a bit of a snag. It seems like COAL is being addressed within the anarchist ranks, but a student research project wasn’t enough reason for me to know. I didn’t have the ‘need to know,’ as they say.”  
“That’s no problem,” Bala assured. “Tell us what you found. What were your conclusions?”  
“I just mapped out how we might tackle COAL. I concluded that its weakness is its perception of enemy technology. So I advocate dedicating a few resources, nothing major, to creating, even spoofing, electronic warfare systems beyond our current capabilities. Place them around the city—rooftops, alleyways, hiding in plain sight in parking lots, anywhere—and having local anti-oligarch forces operate them. This could be an opportunity to work with other groups, to ally against our common enemy. It’ll be up to those who operate them when to turn on the technology, when to confuse the drones overhead. It’s the ultimate decentralized plan; it plays on our strengths.” The presenter’s eyes sparkled.   
“Very good!” Bala applauded. The sides of her mouth twitched, like she knew something we didn’t.  
I sat stunned. I immediately began annotating my notecards, hoping to raise the level of my presentation at the last minute.   
The next presenter was up. A young man. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. He shuffled to the blackboard. He had loose skin, like he had lost a lot of weight recently. He wore his hair long. He brushed his bangs out of his face. He smiled kindly to the class, took a deep breath in, and began.   
“I’m going to discuss a similar topic… Their preferred aircraft was the Dash Seven, a reliable turboprop loaded with the latest and greatest in intelligence technology. They tested it at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. They marketed it for use over Baghdad, Aden, Mogadishu, and Kabul. But it soon came home to roost. It was initially run out of the Joint Precision Strike Demonstration Project Office, part of…” He cut himself off. “That doesn’t matter. Point is… Point is, it’s now in our skies. Nobody knew about it at first. They’d hear its propellers, they’d look up, and they’d see a prop plane with a huge banner trailing behind it, advertising some insurance company or a big pharma corporation based in the Loop. Stuff like that. The average person on the street would think nothing of it. Turns out… You see, they’ve got this term called ‘thrust.’ Now, when we think of thrust, we think of the force propelling an aircraft or a ship or something. But their thrust is more like, and I’m quoting here, ‘a set of integrated capabilities, from sensors to shooters, to locate, identify and kill high-value, time-sensitive, targets, no matter the weather conditions or time of day.’” He pushed his bangs out of his face with his forearm. “Jesus. I know.”  
I liked the young man’s style. He bounced around from topic to topic, all relevant to his presentation. I could tell that his mouth had a hard time keeping up with the speed of his thoughts.   
“The Dash Seven is now loaded. It roams the skies advertising capitalist bullshit, and it is no friend of the people. It’s loaded with eavesdropping sensors, cell site simulators, advanced radar, ground mapping technology, and, we think, ground penetrating radar.”  
“How does ground penetrating radar work?” I asked. How much does our friend know? I wondered.  
He had done his homework. He didn’t miss a beat. In a few breaths he described how the aircraft emits focused electromagnetic energy, which penetrates the surface of the ground. “They transmit and receive, the signals coming back to the antennae tell them, they, well they basically record the signal’s amplitude and travel time.” Lower frequencies in deeper depths, higher frequency for shallow targets. “They usually use lower frequencies on us, we think.”   
“Thank you,” I said.  
“The war corporations involved were having a hallmark year,” the presenter said, bouncing backward in thought. “Picture the height of the Iraq War. Two-thousand seven-ish. Not 1991 and not the Iran-Iraq war. Sorry, I should have been clearer. Anyway, ISR exports to Gulf dictatorships were rising spectacularly. The U.S. war industry honed this technology over the subsequent years of war. Then last year… How many of you read Independent Justice Journalists?” Most hands raised in the class. “Good. Last year IJJ covered the neoliberal regime that D.C. had recently installed in La Paz. One battalion, loyal to the regime, had ethnically cleansed two neighborhoods of predominately indigenous people in the capital. The areas were designated prime real estate for future financial investment. The Ejército tore itself apart, divided, roughly two-thirds refusing to participate in the mop-up operations afterwards. The U.S. war industry salivated. Another market had opened up. The Dash Seven is now one of the big exports to the Bolivian regime. Other sales included comms gear and drones. Both the Israelis and the Pentagon sell this shit to them. Speaking of the Israelis, Tar Ideals Concepts, an Israeli company, train the Bolivian special operation forces that protect the neoliberal regime residing in the Palacio Quemado. This is nothing new. The Israelis had armed Chile, Argentina, Mexico—”  
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but—”  
“I understand,” the student said. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to stay on point.”  
Bala stepped forward. Her straight black hair barely swayed. “I appreciate the breadth of your knowledge, we all do, but I must ask you to return to your main point.”   
He blushed.   
“No, no. It’s okay,” she assured. “We’re learning a lot. Can I ask you, what countermeasures have we taken to make sure that our harbor is safe from their ground penetrating radars?”  
“Yes, yes. We ring, coat really, our harbors with materials that dampen their radars. In general we use clay soils over copper domes.”  
“Good!”   
“High conductivity hampers their radar, basically. Messes with their dielectrics and stuff. We mix up our approaches and we’re constantly changing our defensive procedures. If they’re expecting a hollow filled with air and we give them flowing water, they’re going to be confused reading their display screens.”  
“Good! And when that doesn’t work? What else might we do? Class?”  
“We can use other electromagnetic energy to mess with them,” a student in front of Bala said without raising his hand.   
“Precisely. It obscures their data reads.”

Before I knew it, it was my turn. I walked to the front of the class. I was a bit nervous, to tell the truth. The presentations thus far had been outstanding. I had learned a lot. I smiled thinking about the knowledge gained. The anarchists consistently amazed me. They were thorough, eager, and tireless. I took a breath and began explaining.  
The anarchists had analyzed the situation. They knew that the Pentagon and its regional task forces were drowning in data. Diverse data points (e.g. CCTV camera activity; drone camera feeds; ISR sensor information; maps of past drone strikes; plots of recent anarchist operations; signals intelligence from Fort Meade, including social media metadata; socio-economic metrics; space-based infrared; weather conditions) flowed like lava from a voluble caldera. The Pentagon had been working on pulling all of this data together, connecting it in meaningful ways, and displaying it in a clear, digestible format.   
The Pentagon called the program GARNER, Graded Ascertaining of Relationships via Network Exploitation Recognition. GARNER engineers (a blend of university academics, DARPA scientists, corporate contractors, and Air Force Research Lab technicians) developed a high-capacity computer program able to nimbly and precisely unravel, analyze, and present the swamp of data about the ‘enemy.’  
GARNER’s main feature was an analytics graphics processor, which displayed the distilled relationships of enemy combatants in a simple, user-friendly format. The user, the Task Force, for example, would input whatever data it wanted and GARNER would output an understandable graph and an accompanying one-page summary of the key points. Buried relationships among dispersed individual nodes of data boiled to the surface.   
“In that sense, the program worked well,” I explained. “And this is where the anarchists stepped in. The Pentagon spent billions of taxpayer dollars on GARNER. It only took one night of hard work, eighty-five dollars worth of coffee and vegetables, for anarchists to ruin it all.”  
The class chuckled before me. Bala grinned in the corner. I was in the zone. Fully into this role.  
By tapping into the input feeds and inserting random, non-repeating data points into GARNER’s analytics processor, the anarchists were able to render the whole program useless. They’d then monitor certain decrypted Task Force and DHS communications, and delight in hearing mercenaries being dispatched on wild goose chases near and far.   
Nearing the end of my presentation, I told the class about a conversation among anarchist hackers I had overheard when researching my presentation. The anarchists had been discussing the broader context as they put final touches on their operation:  
\- Screw the Pentagon’s engineers.  
\- The ones working on GARNER?  
\- All of them. They’re screwing themselves by doing this.   
\- How so?   
\- How many late nights do they put in, away from their families?   
\- Dozens.   
\- More than that. By putting in late nights to squash us, they ultimately distance themselves from their families, from their loved ones. Alienated from their spouses and children, the engineers are losing at life.  
\- Even if their hard work creates wins on the battlefield here or there. Or even if they’re winning by climbing the career ladder.   
\- The war industry ladder.  
\- Yes. Lucrative, sure.   
\- They’ll realize the error of their ways, but it’ll be too late.  
“I believe this excerpt shows how, compared to the capitalist war industry, anarchists maintain their humanity relatively well while fighting a very deadly war.” Though I was pandering to my audience, I did believe in what I was saying.  
The class clapped as I concluded my presentation.

I had the rest of the day off. I used it to catch up on sleep, learn from the cooks, and read beneath the giant tree. I loved the cavernous roots. Up and down they flowed, like a roiling sea on pause. They granted passers by cozy reading nooks. I took full advantage. The tree’s presence had kept me comfortable, providing me just enough of the natural world in order to stay sane in these subterranean caverns.   
“You’re up! You’re up! You’re up!” She was running full-speed into the main chamber.  
“What now?” I asked.  
In one fluid motion, Violet lifted her right leg and skidded to a stop, sitting next to me on the root. Given one hundred attempts, I could never have done that. It reminded me of a Dixie car racing stunt.   
She dropped her voice to a loud whisper. “We just got the news. Hauser is meeting with the Senator tonight.”  
My stomach dropped. I knew where she was going before she even said it.   
“Your mission, and you better effing accept it,” she ordered, grinning, “is to eavesdrop on their conversation. Recording it. Any questions? Good. Finish your chapter, get some chow, hit the cage—you’re going in light tonight—and meet me back up here within the hour. I’ll escort you myself. I’ve got a date!”


	13. Chapter 13

POPE GAZED LOVINGLY ACROSS the table at Violet.   
The restaurant was fancy. It sat several stories above the Chicago Stock Exchange. Too fancy. It looked like Pope was trying to impress Violet by throwing money around, a classic capitalist move. I took that as a sign that Violet’s seduction was working. Bala had suggested that Pope might be trying to lure Violet into oligarch territory, but we agreed it was worth the risk. The wait staff, mostly anarchists or sympathizers of various anti-oligarch stripes, was kind enough to keep an eye out for unusual activity. The staff even offered to take care of Violet if the oligarchs were on to her and made a move. I couldn’t believe she had the ovaries to go in there; it was a hive of oligarchs. I wouldn’t have been caught dead in there. I’d rather have been outside in the cold. In fact, I was.  
Just a bum looking to catch some shuteye, I monitored the proceedings from a fenced-off patch of shrubbery south of West Harrison Street. An unobstructed view was crucial for the recording device in my hands. Violet’s mic transmitted line-of-sight. Bala, Violet, Amlaq, and I had debated earlier in the day whether Violet should go in with a microphone or not. The arguments for mic’ing her up were twofold. A microphone made for easier post-op debriefs. What did Violet do correctly? What did she need to improve upon? What bits from the conversation might we use or exploit at a later date? And a microphone gave us a way of recording Pope agreeing to Violet’s pitch. The arguments against mic’ing her up focused around the difficulty getting the mic into the restaurant and not raising the suspicions of any oligarchs present. And what if they randomly searched patrons in the middle of the evening? Amlaq and I argued against Violet wearing a wire. Bala and Violet argued convincingly in favor. So when a busgirl, an anarchist, offered to sneak the wire in and hide it in the restroom, Corleone-style, we all agreed that Violet should wear a wire.  
“You’ve never asked what I do for a living,” Pope noted, scooting closer. His dress shoe squeaked comically on the polished leg of the dining table as he tried to play footsie with Violet.   
I buttoned the top button on my shirt in order to keep out the chill. Winter was making one last rush before spring settled in.   
“That’s because—”  
“Your second course, madam and monsieur.” The waiter delicately lowered their plates to the lacy tablecloth.   
Violet eyed Pope’s navy blue lanyard when his eyes moved towards the waiter.   
“When the sun sets, your dinner starts,” the waiter stated with a practiced arrogance. He explained the subtleties of the dishes (bouillon of Upper Peninsula chestnuts and classic pavia risotto) and then departed posthaste.  
The clock was ticking. Violet was taking her time. The meal was already halfway done and all we had was his nervous chitchat, a loud chewer, and some squeaky shoes. I had to be on my way in less than an hour. I looked at my analogue watch. Bala would skateboard past my location in forty-eight minutes. If the gap in the fence was covered with elderberry, then she was to continue on her way. If the gap was covered with beautybush, she was to enter and take over for me.  
Violet leaned in for a kiss. She paused, her lips a hair away from his. Here it was. Her pitch. “All you have to do is gain access to the…” Her voice dropped below a whisper as she pitched Pope his mission. She went in for the kiss to seal the deal.  
For a moment, he didn’t kiss back. Just for a moment.  
“You want me to…?” Softly and cautiously, he went over what he had been asked to do.  
I held my breath.  
Violet nodded and took a big bite of risotto. Her teeth clacked on the fork. My sensitive recorder picked up even the lightest sounds. I was happy I had calibrated it correctly.   
Pope nodded. “Okay.”   
Violet swallowed and smiled.   
“I’ll do it,” Pope affirmed.  
Pope would be a great inside-man, with his work for Grace IT, the corporation that took care of all information technology services aboard Naval Support Activity Strough; any time a service member on NSA Strough communicated with a family member or checked on their Defense Finance and Accounting Services account, for example, Pope could monitor and even record their activities. Pope also had access to Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization files, stored in the cloud at Scott Air Force Base. Scott Air Force Base was four hours away from NSA Strough by car, but its cloud storage was just one second away. Pope was valuable low-level, low-hanging fruit.   
Violet’s red dress sparkled, even from street level. “Can we play video games tonight? After we…?”   
Jesus, Violet was dedicated.  
I heard someone choke on an expensive morsel. I assumed it was Pope.   
I adjusted my seat and rocked back and forth, bringing some life back to my hindquarters. I switched ears, taking the headphone out of my left ear and hooking the right one around my right ear. The left headphone dangled against my chest. One ear had to be open to the air in case danger approached. I wondered how Violet felt—one of the biggest anarchist threats, dining among more than a few oligarchs, looking out over the city. Something told me she was cool as a cucumber.   
The waiter approached. “A seared Pennsylvania foie gras, courtesy of the chef,” the waiter informed, bowing slightly.   
I should relax, I comforted myself. Violet was an outstanding case officer. Some of my peers would argue that those trained formally by state intelligence agencies were the most effective case officers. I disagreed. My first reason was objective: Langley rarely washed anyone out of case officer training at The Farm; a fair share of mediocrity made it through the course and into the Agency ranks. My second argument was subjective: other professionals, given enough initial guidance, enjoyed great success recruiting targets within the surveillance state and even the oligarchy itself. Journalists, wait staff, teachers, valets, doctors, and thespians achieved the most stunning successes to date. Last year, one waitress was even able to infiltrate the inner workings of the Department of Homeland Security’s Chicago branch. Her eventual execution had done little to dissuade the anarchists’ tenacity. Overall, certain anarchist case officers were able to assess, assist, and then cultivate their quarry in relative peace and leisure. At least, that’s what oligarch counterintelligence reports had stated.   
Those reports had some merit, I believed. Consider how the anarchists recruited a DHS employee named Jake while he was on leave. He was two towns away from Chicago, taking care of his mother in hospice. Jake’s handlers kept a close eye on his whereabouts. Jake never saw them, though. When anarchists recruited a spy, they’d typically give the prospective turncoat tasks, which increased in difficulty over the months. These tasks served to appraise the recruit’s courage and suitability for future clandestine jobs. Worries cropped up within the ranks of the anarchist coterie in charge of recruiting Jake. “He’s gonna bail.” “I smell it. He’s a double agent.” “This guy’s no good. We should shed him.” But his recruitment went smoothly. His mission once recruited? Sabotage. At a time and place of the anarchists’ choosing. It would be something small, they assured him. And they remained true to their promise. Eight months to the day after his initial recruitment a note was left in his apartment medicine cabinet. The date was set. He’d access the secure location using a colleague’s key card. He knew just the sloppy S.O.B. to steal a keycard from. Once in the secure location, he would clip a very specific wire at a very specific time. Precautions would be taken.   
TWANGGG. I snapped out of my reverie as my one free ear picked up a tinny raking sound followed by a limb breaking. A large rodent? A fellow homeless person? A mercenary patrol? I prepared for the worst. I kept the recorder running, tucked into my knapsack, and hid the knapsack in the thick shrubs to my left. I drew a knife from my leg holster and crawled towards the sound. My heart was oddly calm. I should have been more alert.   
A human shape lunged at me, pinned my arms to my side, and rolled me over in the time it took me to blink. Bala crawled up my chest. Her forehead was smeared dark red. She had my knife clinched between her thin lips.  
“You’ve still got a lot to learn.”  
“I thought you were skateboarding here,” I replied, doing my best to act casual in my vulnerable position. Night showed my breath cold and slow under the resonance of a distant streetlight.   
“I was going to, but a related anti-oligarch mission brought me close to your position.” She let me up and dusted me off. “Ready for your next mission?”  
I nodded, coughing on the cold dust.  
“Where’s your recorder?” she asked. I handed her a rag and gestured to her brow. I showed her my recorder. “Keep it running.” She wiped her brow and gave me a courteous smile. “Take mine for your next operation.” She handed me a slimmer version of the same recorder. I handed her my recorder. “Point and record,” she said. “This one is fresh from the cage. It doesn’t require the target to be wearing a wire.”  
“Did you get Violet’s pitch recorded?”  
I nodded.   
“And Pope’s response?”   
I kept nodding. “Just point and record?” I asked.  
“Just point and record,” she confirmed, handing me my rag, neatly folded.  
“See you back at the harbor,” I said, grabbing my knapsack from the shrubs and departing on my hands and knees.   
Bala didn’t say goodbye.

“You’re in charge of the fire, son,” the Senator ordered. Once a bullfrog in the U.S. Navy, now a Senator with limitless resources, the man lived well.   
Hauser complied. He rose from his seat’s worn leather. The door roared open. Hauser stepped out on the porch. He was a massive man, hard work having honed strong genes. His plaid flannel shirt was unbuttoned several notches. Night, freezing and patient, scrubbed his barrel chest and arms to no effect. He scanned the surrounding woods, his eyes twice brushing by my hide. His look was content. He was happy in his arrogance, or arrogant in his happiness. He eyed the distant foot patrols, nodded, and turned to the stack of firewood below the window to his right.   
An aspect of his look rankled my mind, but I couldn’t decipher it.   
He began stacking wood in his arms. He grabbed logs like a child snatching crayons. Each palm clopped two at a time. Sinew quaked along his forearms. A stack of wood under each arm, he again surveyed the surrounding woods amid the arctic air. With a sharp pivot on black boots he turned inside. The door closed quietly against the night’s bluster.   
I readjusted my recording device and leaned left slightly, so I could see better through the porch window.  
“That should last us a bit,” the Senator said. He wore dark khaki trousers, a thick white button down shirt, and a heavy robe over it all. Soft hints of a thermal long-sleeved shirt moseyed up around the collar. My scope had no problem observing the two through the sagging glass of the porch window.  
Hauser grinned, mouth closed, and sauntered to the wood-burning stove. He placed six logs in the iron rack to the right of the stove. He stacked another armful along the stone wall through which the chimney ran. He settled back into what I imagine was a toasty chair. The small cabin in Horicon National Wildlife Refuge seemed to suit them just fine. The lack of electricity was an added bonus. It obviated a lot of ways their enemies, varied and wily, could snoop on them. It also gave them some undivided peace and quiet. Though I was late to the party, there was still much to be discussed.  
The Senator handed Hauser a glass of single malt scotch. Hauser nodded appreciatively. Crackles from the fire danced on the black and white panel of my recording device.   
“I sent home that historical documentation team,” Hauser stated, breaking the silence. His voice was rough, like a bore brush grating the inside of an upper receiver.   
“Talking shop already, eh?” the Senator guffawed. He took a sip. “No, that’s good. Good work. Did they give you much trouble?”   
I wondered which warzone they were talking about.  
“Smooth sailing, for the most part,” Hauser affirmed. The U.S. Army’s historical documentation teams specialized in combing oral histories, traditional media, and deep libraries in countries that D.C. had invaded. Unfortunately, they had been somewhat competent at their job; meticulous record keeping threatened the oligarchs, so the team had to be shown the door. ‘Redeployed stateside,’ in the Pentagon’s terminology. “I got some pushback from a one-star who insisted the unit provided continuity among rotating battalions. But he won’t be bothering us again.”  
“Good. Good. I trust your judgment. You’ve never let us down.” Though a lover of history, official histories to be precise, it was clear that the Senator recognized the need to carefully control the flow of information. Information was knowledge. And too much information in the wrong hands was threatening, even perilous. If records of today’s wars were the sacrifice required, then I believed the Senator was prepared to order it.   
“I appreciate it,” Hauser said, putting his feet up. The heels of his black boots clanked against the cast iron lip jutting out from the front of the stove. “We conducted several great UAV strikes this week.  
“Good. Good.” The Senator curled his hands around his scotch glass like it was a mug of hot chocolate. “I hope you know it’s been a pleasure.”  
“Don’t start, old man,” Hauser jested.  
“It’s been a pleasure to guide you.”  
“Well, for what it’s worth, I appreciate your mentorship.”   
“Who had it better: you cutting your chops inside the Loop or Terry learning the ropes in Toledo?”  
Hauser laughed.   
I smiled.  
“Terry in Toledo,” the Senator cheered. “Sounds like Doctor Seuss book.”  
“Or a lousy rock band,” Hauser mocked.   
“How is Terry these days?” the Senator asked.  
Suddenly serious, Hauser looked over to the Senator.  
The Senator glanced at Hauser and then down at his own feet.  
“You know who I ran into the other day?” Hauser asked, charging ahead.   
The Senator grumbled, “No.”  
“Remember the asshole who went from the Special Activities Division to work for one of the energy companies in Egypt? The guy who wanted to name his corporate soccer team the ‘Dawn Visitors.’”  
“Funny prick.” But the Senator didn’t sound amused. He inhaled deeply. It came across as a thick rustle in my headphone. “How’s he doing?”   
“He’s sitting on the board of Rexthrop.”   
“Is he?” the Senator sounded impressed. “I guess they’re letting any old fool aboard these days.”  
“Well, he sends his regards.”  
The Senator raised his glass, a cheers to the old acquaintance. “We’ve had some good times though.” His voice sounded merrier. Forceful, but cheery. “No room for games these days, though.”  
“Too much paperwork. Too much bureaucracy.” Hauser explained. His voice crinkled a bit with irritation.  
“But then again, those same factors help shield us.” The Senator looked pensive.   
Hauser nodded. “It also helps shield the sloths, of which there are many.”  
I made a mental note: Hauser disliked the low-level slackers who resided among the security state’s many folds. Interesting.  
“Like an unpaid Saudi parking ticket,” the Senator mused.   
“I don’t get it,” Hauser stated. The crinkle of annoyance was now fully excised from his tone.  
“Many… Many unpaid Saudi parking tickets,” the Senator explained.   
“I see.”  
“There’s a joke about accountability in there somewhere.”  
Hauser threw the Senator a chuckle.  
“How’re the boys at NSA Strough doing?” the Senator enquired.  
“They’re okay. Morale is decent. I had to come down on them hard the other day, though.”  
The Senator’s look asked ‘why?’  
“They seemed to think we’ve got this thing won already. I caught a group of them goofing around. They hacked Petróleos de Venezuela and stopped their paychecks for four business days.”  
“Hmmm.”  
“I straightened them out,” Hauser assured.  
“But other than that?”  
“Other than that, they’re doing well.”  
“Good. Good.” The Senator took a deep sip. “How’re you doing for funds?”   
“Funds are fine. No need to dip into any new accounts.”  
“Say it with me, son,” the Senator joked. “The sums made available to the Agency may be expended without regard to the provisions of law and regulations…”  
Hauser took it from there. “… relating to the expenditures of the government.”   
“You still remember,” the Senator said.   
“You seem genuinely impressed,” Hauser stated.   
“I am. I am.” His eyes gleamed wet with wistfulness or spirits. Perhaps both. “We’re a long way from nineteen forty-nine, but men like you… I am grateful you’re around to carry the flag. A spot at CBNI awaits you.” Scuttlebutt within the Task Force indicated that Hauser had long coveted a job as a senior leader at the Central Bureau of National Intelligence.   
The Senator leaned right a bit and extended his hand. Hard years and a splash of dotage limited his reach. Hauser leaned left and respectfully clasped the Senator’s leathery palm. The Senator did not meet Hauser’s look of concern. He kept his eyes locked on the warm hearth. After a few breaths, he coughed and withdrew his hand rapidly.   
“Let’s not go getting all sentimental,” the Senator said, his accompanying laugh roaring his animations back to life like the pull start on a tactical unmanned aerial vehicle. The Senator coughed again. His right hand returned to his glass. He reached for a joke. “My bones are bad, but they’re not as hurtin’ as Russia’s microchip industry.”  
Hauser plied the Senator with another courtesy-laugh.  
“How are you extracting, by the way?” the Senator asked, looking somewhat relieved to be back on operational matters. “When it’s all said and done.”  
“If all goes well? Union Pier to South Bend. South Bend to Detroit.” Hauser adjusted his feet, rotating his right boot on top of his left boot.  
“Detroit? Be careful, son. Detroit is worse than Chicago.”  
“Worse,” Hauser repeated grimly. “But the airfield is secure, and it’s the last place they’d look.”  
“Last leg out?”  
“Sir, respectfully, I’d like to keep that one close to the chest.”  
“I appreciate that. You’re wise beyond your years.”   
Hauser laughed. A log shifted in the fireplace. “I’ve got plenty of years behind me.”  
“What’ve you got waiting for you, for vehicles?”  
“At Union Pier?”   
“Yes.”   
“Some shitty prototype made in Sterling Heights. Though I’m willing to bet it’s not mobile enough. Too up-armored. Our ground forces get whooped with IEDs, so the brass decides to load every god damn ground vehicle with all sorts of protective measures, but makes ’em heavy as hell.” Hauser wiped his dewy glass across his brow.  
“We’ve been made aware of the problem,” the Senator said dryly, pardoning Hauser’s overreach, just as Hauser had let the Senator’s errors slide.   
Hauser continued, “Affecting all sorts of transportation, including Chinook.”  
“The forty-seven!” the Senator proclaimed, attaining a change in mood. “My favorite.” He let his hand drop. It neatly skimmed the top of a cooler between their seats. Without leaning, he opened the top of the cooler, grabbed a cold brew, and handed it to Hauser.  
“A classic,” Hauser concurred. “Not to mention landing and amphibious craft that now must account for the extra weight of those heavy snatches.”  
Still nursing his scotch, Hauser placed his beer between his thighs.  
I realized then what had been bothering me about Hauser’s look on the porch. As he had gazed out over the land, his look had conveyed a challenge, an open challenge to anyone, human and feral animals alike. Come. Dare to test me. That had been the message. Hauser’s look had told me he loved to dare and craved a challenge. To be idle was to slack. Maybe the anarchists could use this knowledge later on. Maybe.   
“I tell you my old sergeant works for them now?” Hauser asked. “For the firm in Sterling Heights that makes the vehicle prototype.”  
“How’s he liking it?”   
“He’s loving it. Good corporate culture, he says.”  
“Good revenue stream!” the Senator noted, punctuating his comment with an abrupt lone laugh. “Wait, then who was the gentleman who left Defense Intelligence Agency GEOINT to work in Hollywood?”  
“Beak? Beak Fausel,” Hauser clarified. “Put in nineteen years at imagery only to bail early in favor of making composite photos for Hollywood flashbacks.”  
“I always wondered who’d do that job,” the Senator admitted. A look of appreciation resurfaced on his face, like he rarely got to share his warm fire with a like mind. “I wonder if he’ll work with my friend, Mr. Franks.”  
“Franks… Franks…” Hauser said. “I don’t know a Franks.”  
“His most famous task, well… one that he’ll, well… was getting chopped to Langley to manage production of the TWA 800 animation, which they eventually fed to corporate media. I ever tell you about that?”  
“Rough,” Hauser muttered. “Did he survive Brennan’s rearrangement?”   
“The Brennan Shuffle? I believe he did. You know I prefer the good old days. The Brennan Shuffle was pretty bad, though.”  
“Indeed.”   
“What’s your call? Was it worse than the blind date Rios went on with the Unit 8200 sergeant who had the fungus?” the Senator asked.   
“That was before my day, sir,” Hauser admitted into his glass. “Though I’ve heard the story many times.” He swapped his empty scotch glass for the beer bottle, which he opened with a meaty palm. The effervescent whoosh coinciding with the snap of a few sparks in the fireplace.  
“Worse than the upcoming cyber attack on the hospital?”  
“What a grim turn,” Hauser conceded after a moment.  
The Senator ignored him. “We’ve got decent intel that one of their entranceways is located beneath the hospital.”  
“Where’s the intel from? The Tactical Machinery Group?”   
“TMG and other sources.”  
Hauser cracked his jaw. “Is the planned attack going to be just cyber? Or munitions as well?”  
The Senator took a sip. His silence, admission.  
“What ordnance have you selected?” Hauser enquired. He slurped the foam circling the rim of his beer bottle.  
“I’ve left that to the commander in the field, but I’m thinking GBU-91.”  
“Powerful,” Hauser noted.   
“Indeed. Though he’s only to use the cyber attack if the enemy flees from their underground headquarters into the hospital above.” The Senator erupted in two rolling burps, like a black hole binging on cosmic gas. He then finished his drink.  
Hauser moved his legs away from the fire. “We’ve got the advantage,” he soothed. “If they snooze, they die. We can afford to pace well.”   
“Precisely.”   
“How many right now know about the upcoming bombing run?” Hauser enquired.   
“You worried about leaks?”   
“Always,” Hauser replied, hollow tones echoing around the rim of his bottle. He tilted his head back and poured mightily.   
“I tell ya… Back when I was your age, maybe a little younger, I was on loan to Delta for a bit. Good fellas. Hard workers.”  
“Mm,” Hauser affirmed through a swallow.  
My neck began to bother me. I needed to switch observation positions to rest my head. I resolved to do so at the next break in the conversation.   
“They had a leak,” the Senator clarified. “My job was to trace it. It was tough as hell. I didn’t sleep much. Figuring out who the leak was would, would’ve, given me a solid career boost…”  
“Did you?”  
The Senator was staring right through the coals.   
“Sir?”   
“I did,” the Senator croaked. “See, they were rehearsing to go into Iran, to the American Embassy. They rehearsed again and again. One part was blowing a hole through the Embassy wall. I think it was between the Ambassador’s home and the Deputy Chief of Mission, though my memory ain’t what it used to be… Through a lotta legwork I pinpointed the leak: the owner and operator of the cement mixer that helped build the mock walls Delta kept blowing up.”   
“He’d leak to the Times?”   
The Senator nodded.   
Hauser looked at him. His stare was both cold and affectionate. I could tell he knew the Senator was keeping a few cards close to his chest. Hell, Hauser was surely doing the same. Though, in my opinion, none of that diminished the respect Hauser had for the man.   
“What kind of damage did it cause?”   
“It didn’t,” the Senator stated.   
“I don’t understand.”   
“We nipped it in the bud. Langley’s man at the Times spiked the story.”  
“Ah, I knew there was a lesson in here somewhere.” He laughed.   
“Always is. The point, son, is to have all your bases covered. The enemy is resourceful, creative… Hell, I’ll even give them smarts.”  
“So we must be vigilant,” Hauser concluded. “Make sure no outlet is open.”   
“Exactly,” the Senator stated.   
“And be ready to think on your feet,” Hauser added.  
I froze. Footsteps were flattening the forest floor behind me. A patrol. A mercenary, no doubt. Paid well. Loyal to the oligarchs, the Senator in specific. Only pine needles crunched. No sticks. Not even twigs. I wanted to put down my recorder and tuck deeper into my hide, but to move was to risk attracting a trained eye. I held steady. The footsteps stopped. A waiting game. I would win. I was sure of it. But I began to sweat. Seconds gave way to minutes, minutes to chunks of the night. Why was the mercenary patrol standing still? Did he see me? Was he playing the waiting game too? My neck ached. Sweat beaded along my hackles and under my pits. My stomach was already soaked, even in the frigid night. My neck screamed for me to rest my head, to change positions at least. What was this mercenary doing? I reviewed my options: knife by my boot, another along my belt. And the trusty M1911 by my side. That’s it. If push came to shove, I’d be in some serious trouble. My neck muscles trembled to keep my head steady. It felt like two bonfires were raging along the back of my skull. CRACK. A footstep. Followed by another. The third, right in front of my face. The mercenary was on the move. He hadn’t seen me! My lungs seethed, ready to exhale relief. But I held to a steady rhythm. The mercenary’s patrol took him about a hundred meters in front of me, at which point he began circling east-southeast. His path took him alongside the cabin. He posted up at the northwest corner of the porch. White parka, boots, balaclava, and hat—he stood stiff as a charging handle. Only his chest moved. I exhaled deeply, finally. I was safe at this distance, but extraction would be difficult.   
I wondered what conversation I had missed. I refocused on the conversation between the Senator and Hauser.  
“… knows how Snuggle Bear is doing,” Hauser concluded.  
“Speaking of that program, our favorite suit at United Trontomics sends his regards,” Hauser reported. I was somewhat familiar with that corporation.   
“That little shit? How’s he doing?”   
“He’s alright,” Hauser chuckled. “He complains too much, though.”  
“He’s got a decent job, ya know. He shouldn’t be complaining.”   
“There’s much worse out there,” Hauser concurred.   
“Worse than my pops sewing explosives in rats for sabotage?”  
“Courtesy of Special Operations Executive?”  
“Ahhh,” the Senator said, swallowing a sizeable gulp. “Who else would have the leash so loose?”  
“If I recall the tales correctly, the rat hunt that ensued caused more trouble for the Krauts than if the project had gone off smoothly.”  
“You’re correct. You know a little history. Certainly more than your peers,” the Senator observed.  
“History has been kind to me,” Hauser said, though I think he meant: history has helped me maneuver, helped me climb the ranks.  
“Will you grab me the six-pack on the bottom shelf?” The Senator’s left hand dropped over the armrest.  
“Of course,” Hauser replied. He rose from his chair and motioned to take the Senator’s glass with him to the sink.   
The Senator waved him off and continued to nurse the watery slosh at the bottom. The Senator then raised a stocky bottle of scotch and cradled it in his lap. “Wait’ll you have some of this,” he encouraged. “A little smoky. Medium body. A little sweet. And a rich honey finish.” He added a mean pour to his scotch glass.   
“Sounds good!” Hauser boomed from the adjacent kitchen, only two paces away. “You know, we’re stepping up reconnaissance flights for the next two months at least.”  
“Over Chicago?”  
“Yes,” Hauser confirmed.  
The coals eyed the Senator. “Good. Best city in the world.” He returned the stocky bottle to the floor.  
Hauser stepped into the cramped bathroom and closed the door.  
The Senator took a sip. “Ahh, good, good, good.”  
Stopping by the kitchen on his way, Hauser returned shortly with a six-pack in one hand and a hefty brown bottle in the other.   
“Ah, you found the specialty brew in the back of the fridge!” the Senator exclaimed, sitting up an inch in his chair. The leather squeaked in kind. Hauser handed the Senator the six-pack. The Senator gestured for him to put it in the cooler. Hauser complied. The Senator eyed the specialty batch lasciviously. Hauser displayed two hitherto unseen pint glasses.   
“You know, I was thinking…” Hauser began, pouring a little of the specialty batch in one of the pints. He handed it to the Senator for a taste and poured himself half a pint. “I was thinking,” he continued, “that you’re a man of contradictions.”  
“How so?” the Senator asked, relishing his first taste. “Add a couple logs, will ya?”  
Hauser placed his pint on the floor, added two logs to the fire, and leaned three more against the iron lip. He sat back down with a pleasant sigh.   
“Well… you know about Middle East history. At least enough to—”  
“So I admire a few strongmen,” the Senator preempted. “Their power is admirable.” He adjusted the folds of his robe. “Look, it’s all about staying power. That takes some skill. There’s something admirable in that.” The Senator eyed the glass in his hands.  
“Admirable, though we can’t always get some of them to do what we want. Others—Egypt, the Saudis, Jordan—all pliable to an extent. All willing.” I concluded that the Senator and Hauser were each posturing, using knowledge to boost their appearance and to jostle for position; such behavior had helped them advance thus far. Hard to give up. “The point is, these rulers are admirable. They stay in power. They rule. They’re in charge. We turn a blind eye to their behavior because they open up their economies to our businesses, they purchase our arms, and they cooperate with the Israelis.”  
“Nothing new.”  
“Stability instead of democracy.”  
Hauser looked momentarily perplexed, but his face soon relaxed.  
I was slightly taken aback by their candor.  
“Pour me a little… please,” the Senator ordered, tilting the pint glass in his right hand towards Hauser.   
Hauser grabbed the specialty brew from beside his recliner and pleased the Senator with a long pour.   
The Senator’s grin widened in proportion to the suds rising in his pint. The Senator glugged mightily. The beer was fortification for his impending remarks. His face hardened into stone. He sat up and rotated his entire torso towards Hauser. I could see vestiges of the man’s old self in his posture: a UDT patriarch, a bullfrog, a reservoir of knowledge, and a ghost with a track record of unparalleled manipulation and deceit.   
“What’s the status of Hew’s Tomb?” the Senator asked.  
Hauser inhaled. “We continue to reposition all available forces to Hew’s Tomb. We’re going day and night, slowly though. We know they’ve got eyes on us, and we don’t want them knowing that we know.”  
“Do you think they suspect we know they’re going to attack Hew’s Tomb again?”  
“I doubt it. We—”  
“We don’t have the luxury of doubt.”  
Hauser continued, unfazed. “We have seen no clear change in their patterns of life.”  
“You know,” the Senator said, smacking his lips and settling back into his leather, his spine relaxed once more, curved to contours of the chair. “You know, when I was in Vietnam, the Indians took over Alcatraz,” the Senator began. “This was after it had been shut down as a prison. They had taken it over, and” – sip – “started occupying it.” The Senator’s jaw jutted out as he spoke. The liquor sloshed lively in his mouth, distorting some words.  
“How’d D.C. handle it?”  
“Well, this was before I came to power, mind you, but D.C. played it well. They waited. Wisely. Time was always on their side. It was true then, as it’s true now. They waited. Helms and Hoover put together a squad, amazing lads they were, to infiltrate the Indians.”  
“Did they pull it off?”   
“Hell, son! We’ve gotta get this into the curriculum. They infiltrated and did what they do best. After lying dormant for a bit, earning some trust, they started vandalizing the place. They set fire to certain parts of the prison, and got a few of the Indians to go along with it.”  
“And that gave D.C. the pretext to send in Federal Marshals and plain-clothes special agents from the Bureau to remove the occupants,” Hauser surmised.  
“Bin-go,” the Senator stated. “And we’ll do the same thing if these anarchist fairies somehow reclaim Hew’s Tomb, eh?”  
Hauser nodded.  
The three-term Senator sat back, grinning.


	14. Chapter 14

A DELIGHTFULLY COLD SPRING rain doused me on the return trip, though it was switching over to sleety buckshot when I left the alleyway for the circuitous entrance that led to the anarchist harbor. The descent was uneventful. No new tunnels. And nobody was around, aside from a tough blend of guards in the inner tunnels and the bouncers at the iron doors leading into the main chamber. They were taciturn as always, but greeted me with smiles for the first time. Had I won a little bit of their respect? I believed so. Exhausted and soaked, twice I nearly slipped on the rungs descending into the living quarters within the anarchist harbor.   
Though I longed for a bucket shower, it occurred to me that I should return my equipment first, so I turned around and headed back up to the cage.   
Jan and Jameela greeted me eagerly.   
“How was it?”   
I shrugged.  
“Man, you’ve got some big old balls!”   
“Jameela!” Jan scolded, stunned.   
“Whaaat? It’s true,” Jameela maintained.   
Jan laughed and opened the cage door for me.   
“Right this way,” Jameela said, escorting me into the depths of their domain.   
“Duty first. What do you got for us?” Jan asked as she brought up the rear.  
“I have a pistol, two knives, a long-range scope, and the recording device.” I glanced back to see Jan flipping through a clipboard. She ticked off a couple boxes.  
“Here,” Jameela said, stopping our caboose suddenly. To our right, an array of knives spread evenly across three inclined shelves. Each shelf was coated in a soft green fabric. I touched it. It felt like a cross between cashmere and a putting green.   
“Like it?” Jan asked.   
“There are so many…” I gaped.   
“No,” Jan clarified. “Like the grass? Smooth to the touch, no?”  
“That’s grass?” I handed Jameela my knives.  
“Sort of. I call it grass. It’s actually a cross between a local algae and—”  
“Mind if we talk flora later?” I asked.  
“Since when is the rookie in such a rush?” Jameela interjected, tempering her concern with a kind ribbing.   
“I just… I’m sorry. I’m just tired.” I looked over the knives: some folding knives, swaggering with pleasing lines; others carbon steel, black powder coat, ergonomically chiseled, custom grips; and one blade finished with titanium nitride, window breaker knob protruding from the butt. Each glimmered, following my eyes like a sea of helianthus to the sun as I walked on.   
“No worries,” Jameela said cheerfully, taking my knives and depositing them on a cloth on the lowest shelf. “Got it?” Jameela asked Jan, who nodded and ticked another box on her clipboard sheet.   
“We sharpen our own.” Jan spoke faintly to herself, perhaps a slogan she had batted around with Jameela.  
“Where was this the first time I came around?” I asked.   
“We didn’t trust you the first time you came around.”   
“You trust me now?”  
Jan nodded.   
“Showin’ him some treats?!” Bala yelled from down the hallway.   
I looked to my right. Bala and Violet were marching down the aisle towards us. Brow furrowed, Bala looked like she was marching off to war. With knuckles flexing and boots clomping, Violet didn’t look much friendlier. She still wore her dinner dress from the night before. The boots hugged her calves like black vines.  
“What’s the matter?” I asked.   
“Nothing,” Violet assured as she approached. The aggressive demeanor dropped from her face and her posture in a couple of blinks.   
I looked over at Bala. She too seemed more at ease, having arrived, though I sensed she was having trouble calming herself. What was going on? Why were they mad in the first place? Were they even mad, or was it just my tired mind playing tricks on me?   
“Tell us about the Senator,” Bala directed.  
“And Hauser,” Violet added.   
“I could really use a shower,” I insisted. I stifled a burp with puffed cheeks.  
“Me too, but I think it’s better you talk to us now. Tell us how it all went.”  
“Look, I’m exhausted. I’ll grab a shower and a nap and then we talk.”  
Bala looked at Violet and then stepped back. Violet would handle me.  
“Let’s clean,” Violet said, avoiding the conflict. “Cleaning sometimes helps me sooth.”  
“Sooth or smooth?” I asked.  
“Both.”  
We walked one station past the shelves of knives to arrive at the cleaning tables. They were thick worktables, the kind a building contractor might have in her basement. We stood over plastic tubs, repurposed dishpans. I ejected the magazine from my pistol and positioned it neatly to the side. I checked the chamber to make sure my pistol was empty. The scratch of a stylus on an old record twanged in my ears as I started disassembling my pistol. Mineral spirits sloshed around as I placed my slide in the tub. A movie soundtrack from the mid-nineties echoed around us. I was content. Everything was working out well. As well as it could.  
The slide didn’t look real beneath the surface of the liquid. It looked like a piece of alien hardware, a chip from an alien craft that had fallen to Earth on a particularly violent escape. I picked up my bristle brush and began scrubbing the slide hard.   
“Every nook and cranny,” I whispered.   
Violet, next to me, replied, “We anarchists are in every nook and cranny.”  
I laughed. “Not where I was going with that, but okay.”   
She nudged me playfully with her elbow. “Pick an anarchist.”  
“Pick an anarchist?” I asked.  
“Not just any anarchist,” Violet replied. “Pick someone whose wisdom you’d want to hear for the rest of their life.”  
I turned the slide over and brushed the contours.   
“Wisdom? I don’t understand.” I rubbed my eyes with my biceps, but that didn’t help with my fatigue.   
Jameela entered my picture and handed me a soft cloth. She motioned for me to dry the slide.  
“Don’t think. Just pick. Who would you pick and why?”  
The cotton cloth felt very light in my hands. “Fine. Emma Goldman.”  
“Someone living, please.”  
“You didn’t specify ‘living,’” I replied. My exhaustion was pretty clear in my delivery.  
I placed the slide to the side, a centimeter below where I had placed the magazine. I then submerged the frame in the dishpan.  
“Don’t forget to scrub the feed ramp,” Bala instructed from afar. I glanced down at her position. She had already finished cleaning the pistol in front of her.  
“I know,” I said.  
The soundtrack from the nineties picked up in tempo and volume. We halted our conversation in order to soak in the music. I finished scrubbing the frame. I dried it with the cotton rag and submerged the rest of the pistol parts. I gripped the bore brush firmly and cleaned the bore, scrubbing the bore and the rest of the pieces in rhythm with the music. When I was done, the pieces of the pistol were all sitting cozily on the table.   
Jameela sidled up on my right and tapped the plump can of lubricant. She smiled. Rapidly, she fit the barrel bushing in the barrel, followed by a smooth fitting of the recoil spring and guide rod. I stepped back, appreciating her help. I assumed she was helping because this was her domain and because I was visibly tired. She applied generous drops of oil on the guide rod, rails, and barrel link. The slide swished onto the frame. She shifted her weight, leaning more on her left leg. Her body covered the final steps, but I imagine she was fitting in the recoil spring, rotating the barrel bushing to keep it in place, and applying more oil, this time to the barrel hood.   
I approached and accepted the pistol from her. I pulled the slide back and oiled the barrel beneath.   
Perhaps in response to a break in the music, Violet piped up. “Okay, okay. Why’d you pick her? Why’d you pick Emma?”  
I yawned hard and kept exhaling long after the yawn was over. “I picked her because I think she’s kind, resolute, and principled.”  
“Conscious choices, no?” Violet asked.  
Jameela handed me an oily rag, so I could oil down the pistol’s exterior.  
“I never knew her,” I joked, clearly, “but I imagine she decided to be principled and generous, yeah.”  
The oil felt extra harsh on my hands, especially after they had been in mineral spirits.   
“Want to wash your hands?” Jan asked, arriving on cue, hands out in front of her. I imagined her clipboard was hanging on a wall somewhere. Jan led us around the bend to an industrial sink where sudsy water awaited us. We dunked our hands. The water was lukewarm. It felt great.   
Jameela began to sing. 

Wash your hands when you near an oligarch,  
Wash your hands when the pigs beat you in a park,   
Wash your hands before eating non-GMO food,   
Wash your hands before you get in the mood.

Jan took the reins. 

Wash your hands after cleaning a gun,   
Wash your hands, sing, and have fun,   
Wash your hands after using the compost-john,   
Wash your hands so anarchy can march on.

Violet hooted in disarming appreciation. Bala laughed breathily.   
I smiled.   
“I told you we build our own,” Jan said to nobody in particular.  
“Curators, right?” I asked.  
“Curators,” Jameela said, nodding contentedly.   
“That’s one thing I love about the rebellion,” Violet began, drying her hands on her trouser legs. “People are really conserving water, finally.” She nodded respectfully to the hand-washing station. Jan gave Jameela a pat on the lower back. Jameela scooted off with a busy look on her face.   
“Mineral spirits always make my hands feel weird,” I said.  
“We don’t use mineral spirits,” Jan informed me. “We don’t use petroleum-based oil either.”  
“All-natural,” Violet chimed in.   
“Natural,” I repeated, impressed. I handed Jan my scope and recording device. She handed the recording device to Bala. It promptly disappeared into her trouser pockets.  
“Where’s your clipboard?” I asked Jan, making conversation. I rubbed my wrinkled fingertips together.  
Jan started walking and motioned for us to follow her.   
“That reminds me,” Violet broke in. “Do you take notes when you read?”  
“Of course,” I replied.   
“What do you write on?”  
“Usually a piece of scrap paper. Maybe an index card if I have one lying around. You?”  
“Same. Do you type up your notes later?”  
“Not so much these days, but I used to, yeah. You?” Without breaking stride, Jan stashed my scope on a shelf, shoulder-high, and turned the corner.  
“I guess it depends on my mood,” Violet said, looking back at me over her shoulder. We followed Jan round the bend and came across a quaint sitting area. Several throw pillows lay over a thick scarlet rug.   
Jan took the lead in collapsing on the carpet. “Ahhhhh!” Her sigh of relief reminded me of a worker taking the first sip at a pub after a long day on the job. Violet, Bala, and I sat down. I looked around. The concrete ground pushed forth around our little cozy oasis. Rows and rows of bookshelves stretched as far as my eyes could see. It reminded me of the archives in an old Hollywood espionage thriller I had seen in my younger days.  
“Your mood?” I asked Violet, keeping the conversation going. I closed my eyes.   
“Yeah. Sometimes I first incorporate them with other notes I have. Sometimes I turn… Well, if the book is the right genre, sometimes I turn my notes into poetry.”  
“You’re a poet?” Bala asked.   
“Yes, yes.”  
“I learn something new about you every day,” Bala noted.   
Violet chuckled.   
I opened my eyes. It was a struggle. Sleep was bearing down upon me.   
“I guess I don’t really have one standard system,” Violet continued. “Sometimes I like summarizing portions of a chapter, especially if I have read a particularly grueling section or a couple pages packed with rich info or knowledge that I know will be helpful in the fight.”  
“Keep it simple, though, right?” I spoke to ward off sleep.  
Jameela returned with a tray of teacups. “Sugar?” she asked as she lowered the tray.   
“You guys have sugar?” I asked. I sat up.   
“What guys?” Bala asked flatly.   
Violet jumped in. “Keep note taking simple and true to you. Create your own system and do what feels right. Go with the flow, as lame as that sounds.”  
“You’re still talking about note taking?” I thought it was Jameela’s voice, but I had closed my eyes in order to savor the smell.   
“Verbena?” I asked.   
“Verbena,” Jameela confirmed.   
“I crave a library,” Bala admitted.   
I placed my teacup on the carpet. The carpet’s bristles held it in place like bushy prongs. Refreshed, I tucked my hands behind my head, extended my feet, and began telling them about my evening. In ten minutes or so, I had told them about the conversation between the Senator and Hauser.   
I opened one eye. They sat there physically scratching their heads, wondering what to make of all that was said.   
“Focus,” I specified.   
“What?”  
“Focus,” I declared. “That’s my last piece of reading advice. Sit your ass down and focus.”  
Violet bloomed a brilliant smile.   
I realized then that Violet had handled me in the smoothest of ways. By appealing to my love of books and by continuing an earlier conversation of ours, she had ironed out my prior objections; I had unloaded my tale about the Senator and Hauser at a pace of my choosing. Violet, I acknowledged, operated with the finesse of an author penning twists and turns.

A bit recharged, we headed back to the living quarters.   
“Oh! What’s Snuggle Bear?” I asked.  
“Where’d you hear that?” Bala stopped in her tracks.  
“What now?”  
Violet put a firm hand on my shoulder. “What did you hear?” she said, very slowly.  
“Nothing. I heard them mention it.”   
“Them, the Senator and Hauser?”   
“Yeah,” I replied.   
“Shit,” Bala said, turning around to head back to the cage.   
We all followed.   
Bala explained en route that Snuggle Bear aimed to attack the foundations of human biology. “Pentagon public relations personnel had framed the initial DARPA program as necessary to confront unknown, potentially fatal biological threats overseas.” They called the program Snuggle Bear. The Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick helped out. Scientists found multiple ways to isolate and handle a bacterium without harming or killing it. Technicians created a set of procedures that field units could follow in order to create ad hoc environments in which bacteria could thrive.   
“But a program like that would take—“  
“Years and a ton of money?” Violet offered, bringing up the rear. After such initial success, the Snuggle Bear program manager petitioned his supervisor for additional staff. The supervisor agreed. A Task Force official sat in on the meeting. The program manager soon had at his disposal three shifts (dawn, days, and overwatch) running non-stop. These shifts were able to develop genetic sequencing tools that could read any bacterium’s genotype. Reliable prototypes of the tools were up and running after just four months.   
“Unbelievable,” I stated.  
We entered the cage once more. Jan and Jameela looked up from a board game. Reading our demeanor, they said nothing, quickly packed up the game, and followed us deeper into the cage.   
Bala was finishing her explanation. “DARPA then refined these prototypes, scaled them down, and added machine learning to the mix. The resulting mobile consoles were able to screen an unknown bacterium, quickly map the its cell structure, and rapidly determine the bacterium’s ability to damage humans or cause disease. Within minutes, the console would recommend antibiotic design and protocol for the most effective bio-surveillance procedures.   
Jameela overtook Bala. Soon the soft classical music cut out.  
“It’s out there? It’s in Chicago?” I asked.  
Nobody answered me as we arrived at a workbench where Jameela was setting up the recording device. She hit play and the words of the Senator and Hauser bellowed down from the ceiling.

He’s loving it. Good corporate culture, he says.  
Good revenue stream!

“No, no. After this part,” I instructed.   
Jameela fast-forwarded a bit and then let the recording play in full. It provided us with some more details. The initial trials worked well, but the Snuggle Bear program manager was not impressed. A defensive product could be—should be, he argued—turned into an offensive product. The program manager saw an opportunity for growth, “and he seized it,” in Hauser’s words. And so, forensic technologies used for identifying bacteria were morphed into aggressive, invasive technologies that encouraged a bacteria strain to acquire new capabilities to help it evade a human body’s immunological responses and put up fierce resistance to man-made antibiotics. The Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County would be the second Task Force to test Snuggle Bear inside the Homeland. DARPA senior management eagerly awaited word of Snuggle Bear’s performance in the field.  
Sullen and contemplative, we thanked Jameela and Jan and headed to the living quarters. Bala ran ahead of us. Silently, the rest of us walked in single file. Amlaq joined us en route. His awkward lumber fit right in with our silence. It seemed every time the anarchists succeeded in taking one step forward, the oligarchs strode three steps ahead. Time and money weighed heavily in the oligarchy’s favor, and until those two factors were nullified there’d be no real victory for the anarchists, I expected.  
I suckled the bottom of my palm as I walked over to my cot. A few candles ringed the room.  
“I don’t like blood,” I said after removing my hand from my mouth.  
“Me too!” Amlaq proclaimed, bringing me into a bear hug. He squeezed like a pissed off cephalopod. But it was all love. I felt it too.   
“I hate blood, too,” Bala chimed in, entering the living quarters. “But there is no other way to rid the world of the oligarchy.”   
As if sensing my thoughts, Amlaq said into my chest, “Hug ‘em to death!”  
I laughed. “Maybe I’ll be alright after all.” I headed into the showers. I emerged a few minutes later, cold, content, and tired. Amlaq was waiting for me with a kind smile.   
“So you know about us planting fake data in their distributed common ground systems?” Bala asked.  
“Yeah.” I paused for a moment, weighing the import of my words. “I wondered why the Senator and Hauser were shifting so many assets to Hew’s Tomb. It seems they’ve bought your ruse.” I rummaged through my footlocker for some fresh underwear.   
“You know they got a multi-million dollar contract the other day for cost reduction?” Violet asked the room.   
“Who?” I wondered aloud.   
“The corporation that runs the distributed common ground system,” Violet answered.  
“Ha! That’s classic Pentagon,” Bala sang. “Shelling out cash in order to reduce costs.”   
“Classic,” I concurred.  
“Think they understand irony?” Violet asked.  
“No,” Bala whispered, now clothed in black sweatpants and a ratty blue hoodie. “I really don’t think they get it.”   
“They’ll get it eventually,” Violet presaged.   
I nodded. There it is! I told myself. I grabbed my underwear and snaked them on underneath my towel.   
“The Beltway in general loves hypocrisy,” I said.   
“Like?” Violet asked.  
“Like the FBI honoring MLK’s memory. The very institution that tried to ruin the man now claims to celebrate his life.”  
“Great point,” Bala noted. “At the very same time it pursues what it calls ‘Black Identity Extremists.’”  
“True,” Violet said, tucking herself into bed. Her dinner dress was draped across the foot of her cot, adding the slimmest extra layer of warmth. “How about the EPA pretending to care about the environment? When its entire purpose is to manage and facilitate capitalist extraction of natural resources.”   
“Or CIA celebrating diversity in its staff,” Bala added. “The Agency whose very existence is designed to oppress the third world, if I can use that term… Its upper leadership is almost entirely white male.”   
I tucked myself into my cot.   
Bala continued, “It only wants more diversity in its case officer ranks in order to harm other nations more efficiently. Its very existence—the protection and promotion of capitalism—is patriarchal and racist.”   
I blew out the nearest candle.  
“What were your main takeaways from watching the Senator and Hauser?” Violet asked.   
Amlaq blew out a candle near his spot along the far wall. The room darkened significantly.   
“What do you mean?” I asked.  
“I mean, you’re one of the few people to observe these swine with their guard down. In their native habitat. Tell us what you remember about them.”  
I laid it on her. “I haven’t even told you about my big revelation.”  
“Your big revelation?” Bala teased.  
“They’re scared,” I affirmed.   
“They didn’t seem scared in your earlier account,” Violet observed.  
“They’re scared. They’re more scared than we are.”  
I could almost feel Bala’s eyes on me, probing, wondering.   
“They’re human and they’re vulnerable. We should never forget that,” I insisted.  
Sounds of the cooks’ jokes and jibes at one another bounced down the ladder and glided softly into our living quarters. Was it breakfast already? I shimmied farther down into my cot and rolled right. Lately, I had been favoring my right side. I had developed that habit when curling up behind dumpsters during my nights on the street. It suited me just as well down here on a cot.   
“How do you feel about writing in the margins?” I whispered.  
“I’m all for it,” Violet said immediately.   
“Me too.” I smiled at her in the dark.   
“Is there a such thing as writing too much in the margins?” Bala queried.  
“I don’t think so,” Violet said softly, contemplatively.   
Silence.  
“Are you still with me?” Bala asked.   
I yawned. “Yeah, I think we agree that writing in the margins should be encouraged.”  
“No, I mean are you present. Or are your thoughts elsewhere?”  
“I’m here. I’m here,” I pledged. “Though I underline a lot. I probably underline more than I write in the margins.”  
“I like both,” Violet added.  
“Both are good.” Bala yawned too.  
I felt Violet was trying to balance her respect for Bala with what I deemed to be sincere affection for me, her recruit of sorts. But her words stayed attentive. “Writing in the margins, and underlining, too, helps me draw connections with other parts of the book and other books I’ve read, other books I’ve got in my noggin.” I went out on a limb, extemporizing and hoping it would pay off in terms of Violet’s respect for my mind: “We seize the margins like we seize the high ground in battle.”  
Violet surrendered a smile in the dark. I was sure of it.  
“I guess that’s a lesson for us,” I suggested.   
“What?”  
“Well, Buck, the main character in Call of the Wi—”  
“The sled dog?” Bala asked.  
“Yeah. He starts off living a pretty cushy life. And over the course of the story, he becomes more and more…” I searched for the word.  
“Savage? Feral?” Violet offered.  
“Feral, yes. He becomes more and more feral.”  
“Less and less ‘civilized’, as some might claim,” Violet proposed.   
“And that’s exactly it!” I couldn’t contain my excitement. I sat up. “We’re transitioning from civilized to feral these days. But it’s more than that. Most people viewed society’s so-called civilization, pre-revolution, as good, but it was very harmful. It was polluting, extractive, and deadly. And most viewed feral life or wilderness as bad or regressive, but wilderness and a feral life are invaluable.”  
“So we’re transitioning from a destructive civilization to an improved, enlightened feral life?” Bala asked, her tone fringed with a bit of admiration.   
“Yes,” I said.   
I heard Amlaq stand up, crack his knuckles, and then depart.  
I wondered where he was headed at this time of night. Morning, actually.


	15. Chapter 15

I WOKE UP THE next day determined to be happy or at least content. I had gone on a successful mission. I had proven myself time and time again. I deserved to smile. And smile I did. Violet soon informed me that the latest count was in. Anarchists had dwindled in numbers to a fraction of their former might. My smile dropped. While the anarchists had enjoyed success thwarting some Task Force programs—the COAL drone program never got off the ground, and GARNER couldn’t effectively map anarchist relationships—other Task Force operations were in full swing. The Tactical Machinery Group had cut through anarchist ranks. And Snuggle Bear was looming large. An already sparse anarchist presence in the streets had turned into a desert, Violet told me. “But we’re still in the game,” she concluded in thanks.  
“Still in the game?!” I roared, showing that a sludgy blend of anger and defeat was weighing heavily.   
“There’s still hope.”  
“Hope?!”  
“We’ve still got Lakewood,” Violet assured.   
“Lakewood?” I asked.   
“Just listen.”  
An enterprising anarchist named Lakewood had come up with a solution. Actually, he didn’t just come up with the solution. Like a true anarchist, he seized the initiative and tackled the problem with a group of friends.   
By law, the Pentagon’s Biology Tech office had to partner with the appropriate federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick. So the CDC and USAMRIID were present when the Pentagon had embarked on the Snuggle Bear project, because said project dealt with biological contaminants. This legality provided Lakewood a way in. He had military experience—a former Major in the U.S. Army, some said. He monitored DARPA’s social media accounts, attended an Industry Day it had advertised on a micro-blogging platform, and then fed his doctored résumé to an eager technician manning the DARPA booth. The technician passed his résumé along, but Lakewood was rejected for employment. He had expected as much. Not coincidentally, Lakewood soon crossed paths with the DARPA tech on the D.C. Metro’s Orange Line. The technician recognized him and struck up a conversation.  
Lakewood’s acquaintance with the DARPA technician solidified into friendship over a couple rounds of beers. After each beer session, Lakewood would return home and conduct a thorough analysis of the technician’s personality traits. Over time, a decent profile was built. The technician viewed himself a man of science beyond all else. The oligarchy’s policy of endless war was out of sight, out of mind. Like most cogs in the war machine, he adopted a flexible, deluded moral outlook in order to avoid feeling any responsibility for the war machine’s actions; he endeavored to promote scientific advancement as a benefit unto itself, and what the U.S. government did with the resulting technology was not his worry. The technician feigned humility, but was really eager for public acclaim. The man was hungry. He resented being passed over for promotion. He should have made deputy project manager by now, but the ass kissers had been promoted over him. The technician never exaggerated his contributions to the team and never name-dropped. This, he believed, had led to his unassuming imprint among the DARPA literati. He was but a mid-level technician. What else was there? Did the man’s baser instincts drive him? Would love play a role? How about gluttony, vengeance, or hatred? Hatred. The DARPA tech hated the self-promoters. That would be the anarchists’ point of attack.   
Lakewood had to tread lightly, cautiously. The Pentagon’s counterintelligence staff was operating on a permanent domestic war footing. DARPA employees, as part of their non-disclosure agreements, were obligated to download an app on their smartphones, the purpose of which was to monitor the employees’ contacts and to facilitate GPS tracking. Couldn’t have valuable scientific knowledge crossing paths with known anarchists, could we? So Lakewood and his friends worked day and night to orchestrate a far grander deception than they had originally envisioned. Cutouts were employed to ensure plausible deniability among anarchist ranks in addition to layers of separation among the anarchist operators and the DARPA technician.  
Since he was in deep with the target, Lakewood deferred to a close friend to run the operation. The friend handled the DARPA tech’s initial study file and later, after the DARPA employee was lured in fully, the friend handled the DARPA tech’s machinist development file, as it was called. This pyramid of sorts was introduced in order for the operation to keep going in the event Lakewood’s cover was blown; the friend running the operation would not be exposed. Multiple anarchist handlers took care of the DARPA employee. Handlers included professors, postal workers, dog walkers, baristas, teaching assistants, musicians, a seamstress, a mechanic, electricians, and cleaning professionals. Good tradecraft was inconspicuous, and the anarchists were masters of hiding in plain sight. All of them gave the appearance that they were just trying to go about their daily lives amid the difficulties of life under oligarchy.   
Lakewood strengthened the DARPA technician’s conscription gradually. Such an approach required finesse, like turning a stripped screw. Lakewood, a dear friend by now, gave the DARPA tech small intel tasks to start out. A moral norm broken here, a standing OPSEC order broken there. Cooperation built and built. A badge here, a floor plan there. A roster here, an access code there.   
“Still in the game!” I interrupted.   
“The hook was up next,” Violet explained. “After months of preparation, it was time to assess the man’s allegiance and dependability for the big tasks. Was he sharp enough, daring enough, and resourceful enough to play along?”  
“Damn.” The anarchists were impressive.   
“A midnight meeting of Lakewood’s team became heated,” Violet continued. “Everyone was personally and professionally invested in the grueling operation. Different ideas clashed regarding how to proceed. Concerns were raised. Some anarchists feared that the DARPA employee was a double agent. Some feared he was getting a bit wobbly and was ready to turn tail and book it back to the senior security officer at DARPA headquarters, to spill what little he knew about the anarchists in exchange for a lighter sentence.”  
Questions came to mind. Did the DARPA technician fear he was expendable? Would the anarchists cut a deal with the oligarchs at a later date, tossing him to the wolves in a prisoner exchange? It was enough to drive most critical thinkers into the depths of insanity.   
Violet answered them. “All of Lakewood’s team agreed that they’d need additional leverage. Though they assessed the DARPA tech as a good man, his word was not enough. What leverage was out there? Had the man committed petty crime in his past? Did he have a drug habit back in the day that he never disclosed to the authorities? Was there a sexual peccadillo lurking in his university years?  
“A resourceful anarchist hacker found the dirt. The DARPA tech had a niece attending university in Indianapolis who had sexted pictures of herself to an old boyfriend. Though the anarchists had no intention of ever releasing these pictures to the slime of the internet, it was indeed the perfect leverage.”  
“Lakewood must’ve felt filthy,” I speculated.   
“Such is the game.” Violet’s tone was cold, yet hopeful.  
It was a dirty game. I knew that.  
Violet concluded, “All points of leverage combined—the carrots and the sticks—in order to bring the DARPA employee deeper into the anarchist folds. Properly finessed and hooked, the DARPA employee viewed it as impossible to refuse cooperation. He continued to cooperate, leading to a collective sigh of relief among Lakewood’s team. Via secure courier, they were able to inform the Chicago anarchists of their successes. The Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County soon began to experience glitches using Snuggle Bear hardware in the field. Minor glitches snowballed into debilitating bugs. The Snuggle Bear program was returned to DARPA’s Bio-Tech program office in Arlington, Virginia, and mothballed shortly thereafter.”  
“Still in the game.” I sighed quietly.  
Violet nodded. “They’ve still got the Tactical Machinery Group, though,” she cautioned. Violet scaled the ladder ahead of me.  
“And surely other operations that we don’t know of.” I kept my eyes on my hands. A thought was pulling at my mind.  
“No cooks,” she observed as she pulled herself through the manhole.  
“Why is it called a manhole?”   
“Womanhole, now,” Violet corrected, bumping the table as she helped me up.  
“Ehhh,” I complained. “That doesn’t sound much better.”  
She laughed.   
I surveyed the table before us. It looked like the cooks had abandoned it, mid-slice: eggplant was strewn, diced across chopping blocks; green olives rocked tenderly inside jars of golden oil; flaky cloves of garlic lined up in disarray, like new recruits on the first day of basic training; onions stood watch; parsley sprigs ringed the operation like nature’s sentries; and whole tomatoes, smooth basil, and hunks of mozzarella hung sequestered to the side, like a gang at recess.   
Footsteps.   
I turned around.   
“Vamos a preparar una deliciosa ensalada italiana, la famosa ensalada Caprese!” one of the cooks yelled. In a slow, smooth sweep, he pulled the ingredients to center stage and relegated the other vegetables to the outskirts.   
“Por lo cual necesitamos hoyas del albahaca, tomate, y...” Violet noted. She reached for a tomato.   
The cook stopped her. “Has lavado las manos?”  
“Shit,” she replied. She slunk away to wash her hands in the corner sink. I followed.   
“La higiene…” I heard the cook instruct.  
“Tantito jabón,” Violet muttered, grabbing a bar of soap. “Tienes que desinfectar los manos. Sobre todo, la primavera es cuando,” she stumbled, “enfermedades se fue encontrar.”   
We returned to the table. I thought about the recent losses the anarchists had suffered. Was the lack of anarchists here today a result of those losses? Surely not. The anarchists still had a chance. Right? Violet seemed optimistic.   
“Dos? Dos tomates?” I asked, ruing not paying greater attention in high school Spanish class.   
The cook nodded and patted me on the shoulder. “Rebanada finamente,” he said slowly.  
We got to work.   
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, letting the nagging thought out.  
“Tell you what?”   
“About the misdirection. The hack into the DCGS. The planting false intel about anarchists retaking Hew’s Tomb. Why didn’t you tell me?”  
She sighed. “Two reasons, I guess.” She rolled a leaf of basil tightly.  
I raised my eyebrow in her direction as I examined the texture of a particularly plump tomato in my right hand.  
“First, I guess, because I figured you’d heard more than enough.”  
“Operational security?” I asked  
“If you want to call it that. I call it just being cautious. And second, because, honestly… I didn’t trust you. I still don’t.” She chopped the rolled basil rapidly.  
“Screw you,” I said curtly.   
She shrugged.   
“You brought me in here, you know?”  
“I know.”   
“What’s a guy gotta do to be trusted around here? I’ve already seen a lot.”  
“Have you? What have you seen?”  
“I’ve helped on missions, I’ve nearly died on missions, I’ve jumped through all your hoops.”  
“You want to be accepted?”  
“I want to be appreciated,” I replied.   
The cook was oddly quiet.   
We stood in silence, shuffling ingredients and slicing pensively.   
“You think they bought it?” Violet asked suddenly, returning to the DCGS hack.  
“I know they bought it,” I stated firmly. “Oligarchs can’t help but believe their own genius or their own billion-dollar toys. The Senator is already micromanaging, making sure that forces are shifted to defend Hew’s Tomb.”  
“Dos!” the cook yelled randomly. “Aceite de oliva, queso mozzarella…” He walked around the front of the table and pushed a bottle of olive oil towards me.  
“This cheese fresh?” Violet asked.  
“Es el queso mozzarella mas fresco,” the cook replied. He walked over to the sink to wash his hands. He returned, approved of the scene with a firm nod, and walked away smiling.  
“Where’s Bala?”  
“She’s working on her curriculum. She gets pretty focused when she’s going through a rough patch.”   
“A rough patch?”  
I passed Violet a tomato. “We should make an extra batch for whoever’s guarding the oligarch right now.”   
“Great idea!” I added. I hesitated. “What rough patch, though?” I didn’t want to dive into Bala’s private problems, but I asked in case the problems had an operational effect.  
“She’ll be here in a bit, I’m sure,” Violet assured.   
Violet shuffled left two steps. “Please don’t repeat this,” she whispered.   
I nodded and focused on the cutting board, so I wouldn’t dice a finger.  
“I know you and Bala have had your issues. Hell, you and I haven’t always been on the same page.”  
“We might, if you start trusting me,” I argued.   
She ignored me. “But you must know that there’s nobody more dedicated, nobody who has sacrificed more than Bala. Nobody.”  
“Mmm,” came my response. I didn’t think she believed her own words.   
“The telegram arrived late last night.”  
Violet glanced up at me. My look asked, ‘Telegram?’  
“Via the underground estafeta,” Violet clarified.   
I was confused. There was still so much I didn’t know. So much I wanted to know.  
She continued. “It was a message. From Detroit. Her brother’s a government worker there.”  
“What’d it say?”  
Violet recited it verbatim: WE’RE SQUEEZED. DONE WITH YOU. DO NOT CONTACT US. GOODBYE.  
I stopped dicing. I started up again. “Nobody’s sacrificed more,” I stated. Throughout NORTHCOM the oligarchy’s military forces often pressured family members into coughing up suspected anarchists in their ranks, tearing families apart. And here we were, standing there, knife in hand, chopping away like the world was going to be okay.  
“Bury terror in an ocean of rubble,” Violet stated.   
I didn’t even think about her words.   
She tapped the salt and pepper with her tomato-covered palm.   
“Vinagre balsámico,” I said, proud of my lousy accent as I doused the bowl in front of me with a liberal pour.  
The floor shook. The beams and roots above us sneezed out a gritty mortar. I covered my bowl, though the grit and dirt fell mostly in the center of the room.   
Violet continued like nothing happened. I played it cool, following her lead.   
“Caprese. Have you ever visited Italy?”  
Violet replied, “Nunca he visitado Italia, pero visitamos el país el día del hoy.” Something in her phrasing struck me as grammatically incorrect, but I didn’t know enough to argue.   
Violet sprinkled minced basil leaves atop the salads.   
I stepped back.   
“I think we’re done,” Violet said, happily surveying the bowls of Caprese salad before us. “Come.” Violet stacked a bunch of bowls in her arms.  
“Here,” I said, offering a tray that I found leaning against the table.   
With a little rope and a lot of ingenuity, the cook rigged up a dumbwaiter to lower down our food.   
Gallows humor hit us hard while the cook tied the final knot: “We normally try not to eat in the living quarters, but our days could be numbered, so the hell with it,” Violet proclaimed. “Let’s eat!”   
I laughed through the melancholy.   
Violet looked up at me. “Bring this to whoever’s on guard duty down in the wine cellar?” she asked, handing me a small wooden bowl filled with salad.  
“Of course,” I replied.   
“Just leave it outside if the guard is sleeping.”  
“Sounds good.” My trip to the jail took me longer than usual. I walked slower with the bowl in hand. I knocked on the door, following the proper procedures, but received no reply. I knocked again, listened hard, and then left the bowl outside the door. Soon I was back in the living quarters, but not before saying a few quick words by the massive tree.   
Violet had it all set up. Two couches were arranged before a clunky television, our meal spread out on crates. Bala sat to her right on a disheveled couch. She seemed calm and content. I smiled at her, and she smiled back.  
She raised a carafe in my direction, a salute of sorts. The red liquid inside—wine, I assumed—sloshed loudly.   
I collapsed on the couch.   
“How’s your man doing?” I joked.  
“My man?”  
“I know I shouldn’t ask, but… How’s your recruit coming along?”  
“Pope, you mean?”   
I nodded.   
She smirked.   
“That’s a good sign?”   
“He’s… doing well,” she said. She painted a picture for me: The walls were soft to the touch. Not padded, exactly. More like an old white t-shirt lain over cold metal. The hallway hummed with electrical power. The compound was the single biggest user of electricity in the greater Chicago metropolis. Pope walked forth.  
“I guess it’s good to know that you’ve always got a job narrating podcasts if the whole anarchist thing falls through,” I joked, appreciating her minstrel-like skills.  
She laughed and tossed me a chunk of mozzarella.   
“Cheers!” She raised her chunk of cheese in the air.  
“Cheers!” I replied, and took a big bite of mine.   
Bala crawled forward and turned on the television. The screen was fuzzing with grey sleet and black snow. She picked up an old VHS tape that was resting on top of the TV and inserted the tape into the VCR slot.   
“VHS is more reliable than digital,” Bala explained.  
The VCR whirred loudly before settling into a purr.   
“Sailors, soldiers, private contractors, and Homeland Security officials love it here at Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County’s premier operating site, known as Naval Support Activity Strough.”  
A very skinny woman stood tall, microphone in hand.  
“I’m Kelly Cooper, and today we take you inside this elite fortress, the tip of the spear in the domestic war on terror.”  
The picture zoomed out to bring into focus a fat wall to the left of which loomed the lower levels of a great castle.   
“The courtyard,” whispered Bala.   
“Everyone here has had combat experience in one form or another,” Kelly Cooper reported. “They’ve shed blood and tears before, and they’ll do it again.” Kelly’s painted-on eyebrows shot skyward.   
“That’s not true,” Bala noted. “Many are desk jockeys.”   
“Was that deliberate deception?” Violet asked.  
Bala nodded.   
“But today they do it in honor and remembrance of the Spring Strike, which shook our great nation nearly one decade ago,” Kelly reported on screen. “I’m here with Captain Meekins, commanding officer at Strough. Captain, first of all thank you for your service.”  
“My pleasure,” Captain Meekins replied, then clearing his throat into the microphone.  
“This is your first year at the helm of NSA Strough. So how will this year’s Spring Strike commemoration differ from years prior?”  
“Great question, Kelly. Past years were excellent, but this year we wanted to add more sweat to the equation. We selected a handful of volunteers from each of our tenant commands to compete in a grueling competition. They’re put through the ringer. You can see part of our obstacle course in the background.” The camera panned to the left.  
“What does this event symbolize to you?”  
“To me, and to all our brave warriors, this showcase symbolizes our appreciation for those who’ve gone before us, and our respect for our nation and our flag.”  
“Thank you, Captain. And I see you’ve brought with you a couple of today’s contenders.” Kelly pivoted to her left. There stood two young men. “Can you state your names and your units?”  
“Pardon me, Kelly, but for security purposes we’d prefer first names only,” Captain Meekins interjected.  
“No problem. Go ahead, gentlemen,” Kelly encouraged.  
“I’m Mike, and I’m with the Personnel Support Activity Detachment,” said a young man with a strapping chest bulging through a brown t-shirt.  
“And I’m Fisher. I’m with NSA Strough’s military police.” He wore a black t-shirt over his runner’s frame.   
“Thank you,” said Kelly. “And what does today mean for you?”  
“Well…” Mike began. “Today we stand shoulder to shoulder with our heroes, past and present. We are committed to taking the fight to the enemy, no matter where they run. Our PT today is all about that. We’ll be tested on our strength and our endurance.”  
Kelly turned to the camera. “Today’s course crosses the facility several times. They run on the shorefront, they swim in the lake, and they are put through a series of lunges, sit-ups, and push-ups. And when they’re out of breath, they’re ordered to crab walk an undisclosed distance and then ruck to the finish line.”  
“Pardon me,” Captain Meekins stated, enforcing a pause as an aircraft flew overhead.   
“Why are we watching this trash?” I asked loudly.  
“Shhhh!” came the unified response from Violet and Bala.   
“Good luck today,” Kelly wished, dismissing the two competitors.   
“Outstanding young men,” Captain Meekins commended. “They’re going to be a tough team to beat.”   
Kelly smiled and brought the microphone to her lips to ask a question. Captain Meekins opened his mouth to speak, prompting Kelly to jab the microphone towards him.  
“I’d like to add that operating together is what we’re all about,” Captain Meekins continued. “We’re a combined-joint force, and we show that every day.”  
“And that’s what it’s all about,” Kelly said, beginning to wrap up her segment. “All believe in Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County and its core mission. We—they show us every day what it takes to defeat any terror organization that might crop up. Reporting live from Naval Support Activity Strough along the shores of Lake Michigan, I’m Kelly Cooper with CBTN News.”  
“Thanks, Kelly,” the studio anchor stated.   
Bala rolled off the couch and hit STOP on the VCR. The television went snowy. Bala turned down the volume knob.  
Bala and Violet looked at me like they were expecting me to say something profound.   
“What?” I asked.   
“What do you notice?” Bala asked. She sat back on her heels.   
“Impressive. I mean…”   
Bala nodded. “She’s good.”   
“Kelly?”   
“Kelly.” She’s not just a spokesperson, Bala explained, painting us a picture based on thorough reconnaissance. Kelly had graduated first in her class at Wheaton, majoring in Creative Writing and Literature. After finding meaningful but low-paying work in publishing, she doubled down on her student debt and graduated with a Masters in Strategic Communications from the University of Minnesota. The war corporation Rexthrop scooped her up at a job fair in the middle of second semester. They took care of her student debt, and she finessed their image. She was a natural. The routine on the day of the interview had been unremarkable. Her Soothing Sounds alarm clock sounded at 5:55AM sharp. She chugged an eight-ounce bottle of Tassie water, tossed it in the trash, rolled mechanically to her Manfuka Pro yoga mat, ran through the day’s professional goals while forgetting to inhale deeply, and soon headed to the bathroom. She exited her suite at NSA Strough by 6:45AM and texted her way to the interview site as a private first class drove the golf cart. Her day consisted of meetings, strategy sessions, the interview, a plastic lunch, and a dull pain in her left wrist. She departed NSA Strough under armed escort around 6:15PM, and jangled into bed before 10:00PM. Some of her day’s work was displayed prominently on the NSA Strough website before sundown. 

We are committed to our stellar wellness policy, which sets the industry standard for best practices. People in our communities and on the jobsite are at the center of what we stand for. We do business with integrity while aiming to enrich the lives of people everywhere. We have a zero tolerance policy regarding human rights abuses.

U.S. corporate media had regurgitated it, word-for-word, during their primetime broadcasts.   
“You know they destroyed some Native American artifacts to build that behemoth?” I put forward, referring to NSA Strough.  
“Doesn’t surprise me,” Bala said, adjusting into a cross-legged position next to the television set.  
“An invaluable petroglyph, among them,” I added.   
Violet nodded sorrowfully.   
“So why did we watch that trash?” I asked.  
Bala stole a knowing glance at Violet, whose eyes twinkled.   
“Eat up,” Violet suggested, popping up from the couch. “You’ve still got some salad left.”  
I ate quietly for a bit.   
“What was that explosion earlier?”  
“Bala?” Violet deferred.  
“Tunnel ops,” Bala said grimly. “They haven’t found us yet, though.”   
“Shouldn’t we be doing something about them?”  
“Who says we aren’t?” Violet asked me.  
The look on Bala’s face kept even the kindest smiles arcing away from our meal. It was then that Bala told me why they watched corporate media trash: the news, though corporate and filled with fluff, still provided the anarchists plenty of information. For example, about forty minutes into the next cassette tape, pilfered from a local affiliate in Streeterville, a young sailor at NSA Strough entered a building through a side door. Bala noted which way he turned his key. Violet noted that he needed to swipe his Common Access Card first. I pointed out that he was carrying no visible weaponry. Bala pointed out that his boots were the same make as her jailors’ back at Hew’s Tomb. Another hour of viewing revealed more nuggets. Judging by the foot traffic, there seemed to be a shift change in the late afternoon. And a roving patrol carried a gas-operated, 5.56x45mm assault rifle.   
“German made.”  
“Thirty round magazine?”   
“Yup.”   
After the third tape, a cook popped his head in and asked us if we wanted more food. The kitchen would be closing soon, he said. We declined politely. About twenty minutes later he came down again and surprised us with dessert. By then, we were on the fourth VCR tape.  
One patrol, Bala noted, handled his weapon carelessly. Another, professionally. Violet pointed out that the rotary outside the main entrance seemed free of obstacles, aside from one checkpoint. Violet placed her bowl on the cushion next to her. She stood up and pushed the TV closer to her couch. “Better.”   
We watched film well into the night. We were like a bunch of coaches, preparing for the big game. Except our game was life and death.   
“You delete, we’re replete.” Bala sang a few times before letting her hand drop from the dial.  
“Huh?” I asked, looking at Violet who was snoring gently on the couch to my right.   
Bala popped up.  
I yawned. “How do you still have energy at this hour?” I whispered.   
“Do I have a choice?”  
Violet stayed on the couch and after a run to the bathroom Bala curled up next to the television set. I imagined that would have been very uncomfortable, but I wasn’t about to bother her.   
I washed my face quickly in the shower room and collapsed on my cot without changing my clothes. The earlier explosion echoed in my head. The anarchists were working around the clock to dodge, repel, and defeat oligarch forces; only one other anarchist, an unfamiliar face, was sleeping nearby as I adjusted my head on the cot’s familiar green fabric. Admittedly, I was terrified.  
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in days.”  
I rolled over. It was the old jailer. I stood up respectfully and greeted him with a firm handshake. “You’re probably correct,” I replied.   
He laid down on the cot next to mine. Had he been sleeping there every night? I laid back down, but not before using my heel to adjust my shoes beneath my cot.  
“Who’s guarding the oligarch?” I asked. “I was down there earlier.”  
“Today’s my day off,” he replied with a sigh.   
“What’ve you been up to?”  
“Reading,” he replied.   
And so the jailer and I whispered each other to sleep.   
“My peasants know more than your agro-business,” he began, firmly.  
“Your peasants?”  
“My ancestors. Our ancestors. We’re all peasants. And that’s not a bad thing.”  
“I see.”  
“You think being a laborer is bad?”   
“Not at all.”   
“I should rephrase. Forgive me.” Though he didn’t sound repentant. “How about… Our ancestors live better than big agro.”   
I offered him a bone. “I agree that modern machines make agriculture easier. And I’ll concede that they even reduce the value of a good day’s labor, to some extent.”  
“Machines? That’s only part of our problems. How about chemicals? The pesticides and chemicals we dump into Earth… Yikes!” His voice surfaced above a whisper, but I caught no sign of anyone stirring.   
I thought about glyphosate, lead, petroleum emissions, and other carcinogens.   
“You ever get up before dawn, grind corn for your tortillas and flour for your bread, collect manure, milk the cows by hand, and collect apples in the orchard?”  
“All that before the sun rises?”   
“On a good day? Yes.”  
“No, I can’t say that I have done that. You had an orchard?” I asked.  
“In a past life, my young friend. In past lives.”  
I was confused.  
“Uncork the barrel.” He inhaled deeply. “Sniff. Take a good whiff. There’s no smell in the world quite like it, quite like the aroma of a barrel of cider.”  
I could picture it.  
“If we get out of this in one piece—if my old ass makes it—we’ll find my old farm together. I’ll show you the rounds.”  
“I’d like that.” I wanted to sound serious, but I think my words came out flat.   
“You’ll have to get up earlier, though,” he scolded. “Shit, you sleep late.”  
“I’m working on it,” I muttered sheepishly.  
“Don’t beat yourself up too much,” the jailer advised. “Your so-called modernization, Earth’s pollution…”   
I didn’t catch the rest.  
Light footfalls scampered above. Kids, I presumed. When would the next explosion come? When would the Tactical Machinery Group breach the anarchist harbor? I exhaled deeply, looking to deliberately calm myself before bed. Just as I entered the zone between consciousness and sleep, the jailer piped up.  
“Traditional farming methods also support a lower population. It’s less stress on the environment and less sustenance for the current Homo sapiens virus to grow.”  
This guy pulls no punches, I thought.   
“But I’ll still be here—my kind, at least—plowing the fields by hand and taking cold showers…”  
I heard his cot creak. I assumed he was rolling over for some shut-eye. At last. I too rolled over. Sleep came quickly.


	16. Chapter 16

FOR DECADES, THE PENTAGON postulated that cities were the battlefield of the future. Coastal cities posed the thorniest of problems. Dense urban areas like Tunis, Lima, Lagos, Istanbul, Barranquilla, Alexandria, and Manila were on the Pentagon’s map as potential trouble spots. True to form, the Pentagon threw billions at the issue: waging war effectively in a coastal city. The war industry proposed developing a software program, for use in the middle of battle, which would allow troops to customize their available forces in real-time. After the usual red tape and bureaucratic procedures, they came up with RACKET, Resilient Architecture of Combat Kinetics in Expeditionary Testbeds. RACKET would display, say, all of the forces available in a given area. On a rugged tablet, a junior officer would see all friendly armored vehicles, dismounted infantry, drones, piloted aircraft, DHS agents, and plainclothes mercenaries. RACKET gave the average Task Force grunt (‘tactical operator’ in public relations speak; ‘pawn’ in anti-oligarch nomenclature) an accurate, real-time sense of the battlefield. It attempted to streamline the concerns of platoon non-commissioned officers and company officers, and feed these concerns to a commander back at headquarters. Once informed, the commander could help them compose a tailored, forceful response to address the troops’ ad hoc needs; RACKET basically helped commanders quickly adjust the forces they used, while evolving their goals as the battle raged. Its uses varied. Maybe a Task Force squad on patrol was being ambushed and needed a nearby fire team to be redirected their way. Maybe a group of DHS mercenaries escorting a convoy of fuel trucks along Lake Shore Drive was taking small arms fire and needed an available aircraft to strafe the enemy. Maybe a Task Force lieutenant thought he saw malevolent anarchist activity in the upper levels of a building up ahead and needed a drone to infrared the thirteenth and fourteenth floors. Maybe—  
“WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”  
I rolled onto my back and looked up at the harsh lights above. I felt like I was on a hospital gurney. I had never seen the living quarters so bright. My ears picked up a distant alarm. It came down from the kitchen area, but it was also vibrating through the wall by the shower room.  
“What?!” I yelled, grumpily and a little scared.   
“Security breach!” Bala yelled.   
“Security breach?” I sat up. All of the cots but mine were packed up and stacked along the far wall. All of the footlockers were pushed to the side. Some were turned over, what remained of their contents spilled across the floor. The rugs were tossed aside, and most of the tapestries were crumpled beneath their old perches. Amlaq sat in the far corner, in a meditative pose.  
I grabbed my knapsack from underneath my cot and began hastily packing it with the necessities from my footlocker.   
“What’re we doing?!” I yelled to Bala. She was handing out pistols from a cart. A stocky, middle-aged man with round eyes and a red nose accepted a pistol from Bala, checked that the weapon was on safe, and holstered it along his left leg. Bala pulled him into a fierce hug and then shoved him towards the anteroom.  
“Disband. Effective immediately,” she relayed.  
“Disband?!” I couldn’t believe it. “What do you mean?”   
“Are you stupid or something?” she yelled.   
I stood there, dumbfounded. This was it? I argued, “This is it?!”  
“Don’t ask me. Ask him,” she nodded to Amlaq who was still sitting tranquilly in the corner.   
“What? Where’s Violet?!”   
The alarm changed tones. Its warble turned to sharp blasts of a horn. They came in three second bundles.  
“He let her go,” Bala said, her face a rage. She counted the pistols remaining. “You’ve got five minutes,” she instructed me.   
Violet entered. She was wearing her tight black rucksack, the same one she had worn when rescuing me in the park.   
“Amlaq let you go?” I asked her. I was very confused.   
“Huh?” She hugged me, quickly.   
“No, asshole,” Bala corrected. “Amlaq let the oligarch go.”  
“Now wait,” Violet argued. “We don’t know that.” Violet donned a dark purple shawl over her neck and rucksack.  
“Our prisoner is gone,” Bala said, without missing a beat. “The Task Force will be on us before Earth can spin again. Four minutes till disband!”  
Violet turned to me. “You ready?” They were closing up this harbor, she explained, and scattering the pieces. No mention of regrouping.  
I stood there, frozen amid an air of despair that hung in the room like a thick fog foiling all optimism and resolution.   
“This son of a bitch,” Bala whispered, eyes on Amlaq. She took a step towards him. Then another. “This guy… You let her out, didn’t you?! You freed her, didn’t you, you stupid SHIT!”   
She began kicking him, landing a few strong ones on his ribs before Violet was able to intervene. Amlaq just sat there.   
“We don’t know how the oligarch escaped. It’s unfair to blame Amlaq right now,” Violet cautioned.  
I began processing the events. Slowly. “The oligarch is gone? The prisoner is gone?”  
“A security breach of the worst kind. She’ll have the damn Task Force on us in no time,” Bala explained, frothing at the mouth. She shook off Violet’s restraining hands and walked back to her cart of pistols.  
“Where is everyone?” I asked, slowly. I checked my pockets to make sure I had my essentials. I ran through a few words in my mind: fire, knife, med-pack, poncho, water, light.  
“Gone,” Violet replied.   
“Jameela? Jan? The cooks?”  
“Gone.”  
“That’s it?!”   
“That’s it,” Violet affirmed, her hands running through her hair. After a few swipes through her locks, she pulled her hair into a ponytail.   
“You’re just going to collapse like that? Just like that?” I disputed.   
“Not like that,” Violet replied, though I didn’t know what she meant.  
I tried to rally the troops. “Their terrorism is fear. It’s aimed at the audience, not the victims. The anarchists—you!—are winning the battle of hearts and minds. They—”  
“Nice speech, coach,” Bala joked, brutally callous.   
“If we disband, then they’re the victors,” came my final argument.  
Violet faced the nearest wall, ripped down a green and yellow tapestry, and screamed.   
I watched, amazed. I had never seen her lose her cool before.   
Violet turned. She turned towards Bala.  
“How do we know you’re not just saying this in order to shred us?!” Violet yelled. “Maybe you’re the mole. Maybe they turned you during your time in Hew’s Tomb?!”  
Bala stepped out from behind the cart and lunged at Violet. Her shoulder landed just above Violet’s sternum. Violet’s throat took most of the tackle. Knocked off her feet, she spun a bit in mid-air, and thwumped off the concrete wall. Both Bala and Violet landed on their sides on the unforgiving floor.   
Bala snarled, connecting with a brutal right hook across Violet’s right cheek. Her back to the ground, Violet scooted up and wrapped her legs around Bala’s torso. Her hands tore at Bala’s shirt. In a flash, Violet popped her back off the ground and slashed her hands around Bala’s neck. Bala growled, launched an uppercut with her left hand, and somehow slipped through the choke. Both fighters recovered in a tumble. Bala tried stepping over to mount Violet, but Violet trapped her right leg. With a half guard secured, Violet rained elbows on her opponent. Bala barely flinched. Her kit was protecting her; ready to head to the streets, she had layers of armor underneath. Bala punched rapidly at Violet’s temple. Violet snapped right, dodging the third punch and grabbing Bala’s right wrist. Violet stung upwards with her right hand to clench Bala’s throat. With Bala off-balance, Violet pulled her left leg up and placed her left heel on Bala’s right knee, sweeping Bala completely off-balance and onto her side. Violet rolled with the momentum and sprung up.   
“Stop it! Stop it!” I screamed, but to no avail. The two women, trailblazing anarchists in their own right, wouldn’t stop fighting. I had to do it. I jumped in the middle of the scrum. I took a lot of punches at first. They were stronger than me, but, between my yelling and my flailing, I eventually separated the two.

Bala and Violet sat back to back, each gasping, each exhausted. Bala licked a wound on her knuckle. Violet pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her cheek.   
“We need to spread out. Fall back to the few safehouses we have left,” Violet ordered through choppy breaths. “We’re not safe here.”  
“I’ll take the last wave,” Bala offered.   
“Dissolution must be completed by midnight,” Violet concluded.   
“Understood. That gives us one minute to shut it all down.”  
The alarm ceased.   
“Time’s up,” I joked. I picked up Violet’s purple shawl and began folding it neatly.  
“I’ll walk you out,” Violet told me. She popped up and offered Bala a hand. Bala accepted and stood up. She adjusted a strap on Violet’s rucksack.   
“Here,” Bala said. She walked over to the cart, selected a pistol, and handed it to Violet.  
“No, thank you,” Violet insisted. “I’m good.”  
“Take it,” Bala maintained.   
Violet didn’t argue. She swung her rucksack off of her left shoulder and hugged it in front of her. She unzipped a side pocket and tucked the pistol inside. In a second, her rucksack returned to her back, snug as ever.   
I shook Bala’s hand. She held it for an extra second, like the jailer did when I had first met him. Where was the jailer? Had he left already? I pictured him tending to an orchard somewhere southwest of the city.   
I jogged into the anteroom. I wanted Bala and Violet to say their goodbyes in peace. Violet soon joined me. She made no attempt to blink back her tears. We talked as we departed. I wanted to continue our previous talks about books, but Violet took another direction.   
“It’s times like this I’m filled with hope,” she said.  
I didn’t believe her.   
“Renewal.” She continued. “We got the hunter-gatherers on one hand, and the agriculture lifestyle on the other.” She put a hand on the ladder.   
“You heard me talking agriculture with the jailer? I like the hunter-gatherers. I imagine they were badass,” I remarked. Where was she going with this? The future or the past? I handed her the purple shawl, folded neatly.   
She tucked it away and started climbing.  
I climbed the ladder behind her.   
“Maybe they are, maybe they will be,” she said, grunting through what must have been lingering pain from her scrap with Bala.  
“What do you mean?”   
“I’ll explain in a bit,” Violet said.  
“Who’d you take?” I asked, straining to see the rungs.   
“In a fight?”  
“No, no,” I clarified. “Like, whose side would you rather be on?”  
“Well… hunter-gatherers had some solid benefits. Diverse food sources, for one.”  
“I imagine those who foraged kicked ass,” I speculated. “Pick some berries and some edibles off trees and bushes. Go hard for a few days, rest for a few.”  
“They had a lot of down-time?” she asked. She emerged from the hole into the kitchen and rolled to her feet like an over-the-hill wrestler.   
“Yeah, they leisured the hell out of themselves,” I replied, stopping short of the hole. I looked up at her, realizing this was probably the last time we’d be in this spot together. “While the dudes hunted and hunted till they caught something.”  
“Nah, they all got to relax pretty evenly,” she corrected.   
“How do you know?”  
“Books.”  
“Good answer.”  
She helped me to my feet.   
The kitchen was abandoned, though an aroma of jerked chicken lingered. The bright yellow walls throbbed dark gold. Shards of glass plates speckled the floor. The tables were gone. Their parts—milk crates, wood, old doors, broken chairs—were mashed like driftwood along the wall near the beaded exit. A tablecloth and picnic basket lay neatly where the cooks’ table once stood. The portrait on the wall, the man with dark bronze skin and jet-black braids, had left us. The roots in the ceiling above looked faded and withered.   
We stood there, for a moment, as if we didn’t have a rush in the world.   
“Was everyone involved?”  
She looked at me askew.   
“In the hunting or gathering,” I clarified.   
“I imagine everyone chipped in. If you weren’t gathering, you were hunting.”  
“And visa versa,” I added.   
“So how about our agricultural friends?”  
“What about ‘em?” I wondered who knew more on the subject.  
“I’d say they had it easier when it came to planning things out,” Violet asserted.   
“What do you mean?” I put my hands in my pockets.   
“I mean, planning what food will be available and when,” she clarified.   
“But aren’t they lacking a little variety in their food?”  
“Why? Can’t they just plant different crops?”   
“I feel like, compared to hunter-gatherer lifestyles, agricultural living has less variety of food.” I had read that somewhere but played it off as my own. I realized maybe we both were posturing. Did she read the same stuff I read? Did she go to the same library I went to? The library. I wondered how the librarian was doing these days.   
“So few choices that it affects their health?” she asked.  
“Like scurvy or something?” I asked, piling question on question.   
She laughed. “Maybe.”   
“I feel like we don’t know our stuff.” I offered, gladly.   
“Should that stop us from exploring the possibilities, between you and me?”   
“Good point.” I continued so no silence would creep in. “So you think hunter-gatherers are better positioned—like, they suffer from less disease—because they can get their hands on a greater variety of food?”  
“That’s what I’m thinking,” she said. She waved me on towards the main chamber. I followed.  
“Wait. So in an agricultural society, people, if they’ve got their shit together, can regulate their population according to the food supply?” I asked.   
“Yup. According to the relative scarcity or abundance for the food they’ve grown.”  
“That’s an advantage?”  
“That’s an advantage,” she assured. Her words seemed confident. “Hunter-gatherers might outgrow the food source.”  
“And be forced to move on,” I ventured. “And if they’re unable to adapt or move on in time, their population will stay low.”  
“And that’s a bad thing?”  
“From the planet’s perspective, no.”  
“I’d argue that from the planet’s perspective, hunter-gatherer societies are preferable,” Violet said as she parted the bearded curtain. She stood there in the middle of the beads and looked back over her shoulder.  
“Because of the lower populations?” I asked.  
“Yeah,” she said. “A low population stresses the Earth less. They shouldn’t gain critical mass to be a polluting force on a planet-wide scale.”  
“What size are we talking here? A small village?” I walked up behind her.   
“Hardly,” she stepped forward, letting the beads cascade over her black rucksack. “From what I can tell, a village can only expand for a while if the people develop some sort of agriculture-based economy.”  
“I hate that word.” I passed through the curtain in one step.   
“Ha! Economy? Me too,” she said. She nodded to the mighty tree. “Okay, so let me rephrase. Only agriculture-based ways of life can lead to villages of any decent size.”  
Agriculture. Flora. I looked around the cavernous chamber. A dim light no longer shined up from the bend between the floor and walls. The vines along the walls looked skinnier, having shrunk from wrist caliber to finger caliber. I didn’t take it as a sad sign, necessarily. Maybe the flora was preparing, perhaps receding to brace for an imminent onslaught. Wise move.  
We walked past gentle coals smoldering in a metal barrel.  
“Burning some documents,” Violet said, nodding to the barrel.   
I nodded too. “It’s funny,” I said, walking up beside Violet. I glanced at the gash on her cheek. I bet Bala hit very hard.   
“What?”  
“Just the other day, I was talking about agriculture with someone.”  
“Who?”  
“I don’t remember, but we were talking about Hammurabi and how he actually cared about the details of his kingdom’s agricultural setup.” I looked up at the tree. Violet followed with a broad smile. Were we really abandoning this place? The tree’s roots still surged mightily in the middle of the cavern. The bulletin board from the main hallway was broken in two, tossed at the base of the tree. I looked up. The tree’s murky canopy grimaced down at me. “I wonder what effects different groups of people, hunter-gatherers and agriculture folks, show in their bodies over time.”  
“Like on an evolutionary scale?” Violet asked, kicking the bulletin board with her toe.   
“Yeah.” I showed my excitement. “Or! In our future, the future, like a hundred-thousand years from now, how people will look!”   
Violet seemed to react well to my enthusiasm. “If the bullshit consumer society had continued,” she began, taking my gusto and running with it, “then I imagine humans would have been all hunched over—”  
“Brittle bones, too,” I speculated, cutting her off.   
“Brittle bones,” she repeated, somewhat deflated. She turned and jogged out of the cavern into the main hallway.   
I followed. The bouncers were long gone. The main doors, unguarded. Faint whiffs of smoke speckled the air.  
“Yeah, but how would all the devices, implants and stuff, affect human evolution?” she paused by the main doors. She ran her hand up and down the old wood.   
“Good question,” I noted.   
We thought about it for several blinks.  
“I’d also be worried about how people would be manipulating their own genes,” Violet said.   
“How is that not eugenics?” I asked rhetorically. “I never understood that.”   
“Me neither. But if people would be manipulating their genes, then I’d bet they’d be many of the same people who lead sedentary lifestyles.”  
I saw where she was headed with the conversation. “So the people who intentionally, in one form or another, contribute to the future fragility of the human race, would be the same ones supplementing their genome with this and that advantage.”  
“That reminds me,” Violet began, heading down the main hallway. “It’s totally off topic—well, not quite—but I oughta mention it. Those who would direct the space exploration program, and eventually the expansion of the human race off of the planet they’ve already wrecked, would be the corporate CEOs who have captured the corrupt governments of the world.”  
“Like D.C.,” I interjected.  
“Precisely.”  
I waited for her to continue, but it seemed like that was the extent of her comment.   
The corridor’s limestone walls pulsed cold against my fingers. All but one of the candles had been blown out. The string that had held up the bulletin board was still hanging on the wall.  
“Same ish,” I said, picking up her conversation. “Those who shouldn’t be making decisions that affect the future of the race are the very ones who are making decisions that affect the future of the race.”  
“No joke, if I were a more advanced extraterrestrial species, I’d work pretty hard to prevent humans from colonizing the solar system and beyond.”  
“Agreed,” I stated.  
“The coolest part, amid all this misery, is that humans will keep evolving, keep adapting. It’d be great to live long enough to see humans reach equilibrium in smaller populations, but, for now, it’s just cool speculating about what a future human would bring to the table.”   
“Hopefully less pollution,” I added, somehow because I thought that was what she’d want me to say.   
“We can’t predict shit, but we can damn sure hope for it,” Violet affirmed. We had reached the end of the hallway.   
“I thought you’d scare me,” I said, in a somewhat regretful tone. “You didn’t scare me.”   
“One scare was enough for you,” she patted my head like I was a child.   
I smiled.   
“This is it?” I asked. “This is the end of the road, where you leave me?”  
“No, I’ll walk you all the way out. I’ll take you a new way, a way you’ve never been before.”  
“Thank you,” I said, appreciatively.   
We exited the corridor and into the tunnels.   
“So which way of life, which pattern is healthier?” I asked.   
“What do you think?” she deferred.  
“I don’t know.” I stepped around a broken crate. “I think the kind of human produced by a hunter-gatherer society is more robust, if I can use that word.”  
“Stronger?”  
“Yeah, stronger, but also kinder to the planet.” Violet passed me to my left. “I feel like agriculture might tend to lead to exploitative methods of production, like—”  
“Big agro?” she asked.  
“Yeah.”  
“Or is that just a result of our capitalist arrangement?” She picked up the pace.  
“Our?” I joked, stumbling over a pipe.   
“Their. Or can agriculture-based society lead to non-capitalist shit?” From one of her front pockets she drew the green stem of some plant. I couldn’t identify it. She snapped the stem. The plant glowed a yellowish green light for me to keep track of her in the dark.  
“Thanks,” I said.  
“Try to keep up,” she joked. “Rookie.”   
“I don’t know,” I replied, my tone referencing her earlier question about capitalism.   
“Hmmm.” Her voice echoed deeply off the tunnel walls. “If agriculture often leads to a form of capitalism or any level of exploitation, then we gotta opt for hunter-gatherer, right?”   
“Right,” I admitted, softly. “Shouldn’t we be quiet? Isn’t the Task Force nearby?”  
“If they know this tunnel, they deserve to get us,” she stated confidently. “So, historically, we go from HG to agriculture, agriculture to corporate agriculture and GMOs, narrowing the available food even more, and screwing over our own species completely.”  
“Hunter-gatherer? HG?”  
Violet laughed. “Ol’ G?” she offered.  
“Well these ol’ humans have deforested like it’s their job.”   
“In a way, it is their job. The demands of capitalist lifestyles require deforestation to some extent.”  
“Yes, you’re right. I like the progression you drew from hunter-gatherer to agriculture to corporate domination. But now we’re rallying. Now we’re reversing the process. Going from GMO and corporate food to small-scale agriculture, to HG,” I said, trying to string the reversal together.   
“Right on,” she said. “But it took a crisis before some humans went in that direction. And even so, many people still cling to their old polluting ways.”  
We rounded a bend. The walls turned from concrete to a smooth brick.  
“Do you think the industrial revolution is a natural or inevitable result of the establishment of an agricultural economy?” she asked.   
“There’s that word again,” I remarked. I followed it up with a quick laugh, just to make sure she knew I was playing around.   
I thought I’d get a laugh, but her lips just bid a light chuckle. She offered, “I’d say, since division of labor, dense population, and hierarchy seem to accompany agriculture, then industry is a natural outgrowth of all that.”   
“Shoot,” I replied.   
“You said it.”   
We exited through a gaping hole in the wall onto a walkway suspended over a wide sewer.   
“Is it ironic…” She stepped around a missing section. “Watch your step. Isn’t it ironic that the first region to proceed into an agriculture-based lifestyle, the Fertile Crescent and the Levant, are now the regions that D.C. beats up most frequently?”  
I didn’t answer. I had no answer. She was leading to a subject I didn’t want to touch. I’d need all my wits about me. I worked hard to shore up my defenses. Fire, knife, med-pack, poncho, water, light. These words ran through my mind as I tried to leave the hunter-gatherer conversation behind.  
“How does the availability of water sources affect the HGs?” she asked.  
“I imagine they’d huddle around a water source, more or less.” My answer was halfhearted. And I was okay with that.   
“For drinking and for hunting. Fishing, I mean.” We hadn’t talked about water sources, let alone the mighty sea.   
“That’s gonna be a hurdle, already is, coming down the road,” I fumbled.  
“What?”  
“Water. We’ve polluted most fresh, natural sources.” I followed her up a ladder. This one was bright steel. It contrasted starkly with the dark black ladder I had been most familiar with. A stout door met us at the top of the ladder. It was bolted shut with two padlocks. They posed no problem for Violet. She slid her rucksack in front of her, and in a matter of minutes she had the locks cut. She tossed each into the churning waters below us. I followed each lock as it fell, but I couldn’t see a splash. The waters seemed higher than normal. I felt cold. I wondered what the weather was like outside. In silence, we crawled through a stout door.   
“So what do we do?” I asked.   
“If either of us makes it long enough to impart anything on the next generation…”  
“So gloomy,” I said.  
“These are the days.” A grunt punctuated her reply.  
“Fair enough.”  
“I think we’ve already influenced a few,” she said optimistically.   
“We have. We have,” I assured.   
“I shouldn’t be so gloomy,” she said softly.   
“If we make it longer, I say we go for more hunter-gatherer. Like we said, that is part of what we’re doing these days. We continue to hone our skills and go from here.”  
“Should we even try to determine the course of events? Maybe we should just let it flow… Let it flow?” she asked herself.  
I thought about her question as we walked, hunched, down the hallway. Let it flow. I felt like we were treading new territory. It seemed unreal. Too straightforward.   
“Where are you going to go?” I asked. We had deferred the toughest questions for long enough.  
She didn’t reply.   
I tried again. “Where are you headed?”  
“Low-density hunting and gathering. Small, mobile groups of families. It’s where we’ve been. And it’s where we’re headed.”  
“You’re not answering my question. You know what I mean.” I tried one more time. “Tonight. Where are you headed?”  
“I’m taking it one step at a time. I’ll send you on your way and then figure it out.”   
The hallway led us to a basement, the basement to a flight of stairs. One bulb flickered high above in the stairwell. The walls were pasty yellow. I could see my breath. The wind howled beyond the building above. We drew our pistols. Step by step, we cleared the stairwell as we ascended. Once we reached ground level, Violet paused beside an exit. A horn honked somewhere on the other side of the door. Tires squealed. A gunshot rang out. Then all was quiet.   
“Snipers?” I asked.   
“Perhaps.”   
“Yours?” I asked.  
“Ours?”  
“Anarchists?”   
“Maybe.”   
“Maybe,” I repeated.   
She leaned against the door. I wondered what she was thinking. I wondered how to play the moment. It depended on my objectives. Should I have given her the eyes a loyal canine gives his human before the human trudges off to work in the morning? Should I have bored a hole in her forehead with anxious eyes? I did none of that. I went with the less-is-more approach and stared at the stairwell concrete floor.   
“You know why I picked you?”  
“Picked me?” I asked.  
“Anarchists come in all stripes, all sizes, and from all backgrounds. They come to us on their own time and on their own terms. But you, you’re extraordinary…. I picked you because we needed you. We still need you. I looked for gentlemen, for loners, for independent minds, and for oddball rebels. You’re all of these. You’re more. You’ve taught us. You’ve damn sure taught me. You’re imaginative, sneaky, inquisitive, and bold. You know when to attack and you know when to protect your cards. You’re a natural leader and you don’t even know it. You’re a natural leader where no leaders are required, and you’ve made us all better for it. You…”   
Violet stopped talking at the sight of my wet eyes. If only she knew the honest depths of my grief.  
“Be careful,” she warned, mustering a protective tone. “Their tracking capabilities are…” Her look told me everything. “The last report before the intel shop dispersed was nothing but bad news. Their geospatial—”  
“I get the point,” I replied. “I’m screwed.”  
“We’re not screwed. Just stay underground. Or, with your skills, stay in the alleys.”  
“I get it.” I cracked the door and looked out. The fog had returned. Its sharp nip bit at my face, like a strong aftershave.  
“SNATCH’s state of the art analytical tools—”   
I was done. “Peace pack,” I said. I opened the exit, bumping her shoulder with the door in the process. Hit by the cold apathy of my departure she darted in front of me and grabbed me. She hugged me. Tender and quick.  
“They’ve got RACKET, too,” she informed me. RACKET was the device that put the location and status of all friendly forces on a handheld tablet. “They’re much more organized now.”  
I nodded, shoring up my courage, and exited. If I was going to depart, I’d better to do it quickly.  
“Take care of yourself,” she whispered after me. “You know how to find me.”  
“I’ll see you soon,” I said over my shoulder, sounding more hopeful than confident. I’m sure she fully expected me to get picked off before sunrise.   
I took a right. I kept my head down. I heard the door close firmly behind me. Part of me wondered if Violet was still there, waiting on the other side, ready to pounce, guns blazing, if I got into trouble. I turned the bend, leaving Violet and her words in the dust. It was a cruel departure, and not how I had envisioned it happening, but these were cruel times.   
She had tried to tell me about SNATCH, but I knew all about it. Until a year ago, there was no direct or easy method for a single analyst to rapidly access and examine the seemingly endless plethora of geospatial imagery available. The old approach (on-the-fly gathering from dozens of sources, downloading, sifting through it all) consumed time and great energy. And it rarely produced the desired results fast enough. SNATCH, Studies in Nationwide Analytics of Terrain Cloud Handiwork, was the Pentagon’s response. SNATCH gave analysts and those with a need-to-know the latest images of any terrain. Leveraging zettaflops of computing power, SNATCH compiled military satellite data along with open-source and commercial satellite data. It put it all—visual, infrared, multiple radio frequencies, synthetic aperture radar, et cetera—in a cloud, curated by, of all organizations, the Defense Intelligence Agency and a Silicon Valley tech giant.  
I disappeared into the fog.


	17. Chapter 17

I GLANCED AROUND ME. The street was barren. The ground was wet with receding fog. The wind whipped my face. I tucked in my shirt and zipped up my jacket. I pulled the straps on my shoulders, so my knapsack would ride higher on my back. I tucked my chin and kept walking.  
I stopped just short of the intersection. The street signs immediately registered. I knew where I was. Leaning against the wall, I took in the sights: cameras, perhaps disabled, grinned sinisterly atop all traffic lights; abandoned cars sat lopsided along the curb; parades of paper, leaves, and plastics blew northward; and clouds loomed low. Pigeons and squirrels were the only life around.  
A prop plane buzzed between clouds. I angled my left eye up, careful to keep my profile hidden. The plane was probably an EC-130 Commando Solo, judging by the silhouette. The 202 Special Operations Wing out of Lansing, Michigan, was behind this plane, if I recalled correctly. It broadcast messages onto local Chicago radio during the day, television at night. It could interfere with any cable, satellite, or antenna broadcast. I tucked myself in a doorway until the plane had passed.  
I thought about Amlaq. I felt bad for him. What had Amlaq felt after Bala accused him of freeing the oligarch? Was he confused? Or was he just empathetic? Empathy. Trying to feel the world the way the oligarch felt the world? But why? Had he really felt the oligarch’s pain? Or just understood that she was in pain? Did he ever consider all the destruction that she had caused? When, if ever, was morality factored in? If an anarchist worked hard to eliminate the oligarchy and to free society from the oligarchs’ oppression, was it okay to say that the anarchist was showing empathy? Or was it better to say that they were just feeling compassion? Or neither? Ah, screw it. A while back I had vowed to not feel what others felt. Just to understand it. Fortunately, I had stayed true to that decision. Empathy brought distant suffering home, and that was too much for me.  
I turned the corner and stepped north, following the wind’s current. My eyes scanned for the slightest movement. Should part of me applaud what Bala thought Amlaq had done? Mainly, acting when he saw someone in need, even though he ended up saving one person at the expense of us all. Us all? Maybe he did something out of pure belief, though that was not my style. I’d rather take in the big picture. Recognize when pure belief rears up. Calm it down and go from there. Should I expect everyone to be as cold and detached as me? As able to compartmentalize emotion as me? No. The anarchists should’ve shrugged off the oligarch’s jailbreak and kept going. Wasn’t that what most people do after a disaster, anyway? They’d read the news about floods in Pakistan and turn the page. They’d see a factory fire in Honduras had killed hundreds. They’d catch whispers about massacres stateside, but they’d shrug those off too. Why couldn’t these anarchists shrug off an oligarch on the loose? Because she’d probably reported the location of the anarchist harbor to her peers. That was one hell of a disadvantage to just shake off.  
I thought about Amlaq. I had never taken the time to get to know him. That was my mistake. No matter what his background, he’d never release a prisoner. I was sure of it.  
I sat down behind an old dumpster and began processing the past month. My thoughts were scattered. I envisioned the cooks swearing and composing up delightful recipes and Bala teaching me the ins and outs of oligarch legalese. She was hard, expressive, and pokerfaced. She was loyal, sharp, skilled, and fair. I envisioned our walk with Amlaq to the underground jail, cooking with Violet, training with the gun instructor, and cleaning my pistol with Jan and Jameela. I thought about Bala and Violet brawling on the floor of the living quarters. I had to be honest with myself: Despite our differences, I respected Violet. Hell, I scolded myself, soon I’d be free of these thoughts.  
I pulled out a newspaper from beneath my tabard. Someone else’s castaway, the newspaper of record was my pastime. I read.

The Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County (CJTF-CCC) Contingency Contracting Office (CCO) hosted an Economic Outreach Symposium at the Wabash Luxury Hotel yesterday. 

Under heavy security, the symposium aimed to encourage local small business owners to do business with the U.S. government and make them aware of the advantages of temporarily relocating away from Cook County while Washington, D.C., finishes its rinsing campaign in the area.

Chip Parsons, the Regional Cooperation Officer, opened the event with prepared remarks. “I am pleased to welcome all the positive actors our there. Friends, really. I see some long-time Task Force partners and I see some new faces as well. Your dedication to the mission is honorable and very much appreciated. Together, we will deprive terrorist organizations of economic leverage and work towards sustainable development. Thank you for your service to this great nation.”

Thirteen different small business owners attended this year’s symposium. Each business was given the opportunity to present a brief summary of their good or service to CJTF-CCC contracting officers. Attendees spoke positively of their experiences.

Mr. Parsons concluded his opening remarks by reminding attendees of the importance of sustainable development and corporate loyalty in the quest for regional stability. “Stimulating economic growth is a critical component of undermining terror recruitment.”

“It’s been a really great process,” Mr. Parsons explained to us after the symposium had ended. “Local businesses jump at this chance for economic stimulus and we jump at the opportunity to clean up the streets. It’s a win-win.”

A rip. That’s the best word I can think of to describe the first explosion. One giant rip. Other rips quickly followed. I dropped my head.  
The anarchist harbor. It was being destroyed.  
A shade under an hour. That’s how long the flight took from Scott Air Force Base in southwest Illinois to Chicago.  
I pictured the pilot in the post-sortie debriefing.  
It was the smoothest flight he’d ever piloted. The B-21 bomber encountered no turbulence. Hardly a bump on takeoff either. Aside from the smooth flight, the pilot would have been proudest of having flown unescorted through anarchist airspace. At least that’s how he’d phrase it on his Officer Performance Report. Despite the official hype, the threat from anarchist flak was slim to none. From the cockpit, no pilot could hear the 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs fall to Earth. These bunker busters were something else. State-of-the-art. For starters, they used the latest JDAM technology. Joint Direct Attack Munitions were guidance kits that bolted onto regular old bombs. During descent, JDAM technology linked to the Global Positioning System in order to guide the bomb on target. That’s right. For years now, the same technology that guided clueless drivers to their destination had guided bombs on targets. The bunker busters also boasted a new fuze system, which allowed the bomb to penetrate deeper underground before detonating. The explosive charge was a customized industry blend. Most pilots preferred their bombs the way they preferred their coffee: strong, rich, with a smoky finish. Not too carbony. The war industry billed the bomb as “essential to the unified NORTHCOM campaign targeting terrorist-controlled tunnels, underground networks, and command infrastructure.” Corporate media lapped it up. The bunker busters left behind little clouds of smoke. Aircrews would debate whether these clouds looked more like marshmallows or little drops of pancake batter frying on a greasy griddle. Anarchist territory, one big griddle—a description off of which pilots could riff. The pilot was at his best when surrounded by a flock of brigadier generals, men who viewed themselves as creative bastards and exceptional people, to say the least. The comedic realm was part of the pilot’s domain, as much as air, space, and cyberspace.  
The pilot had been fairly young when the oligarchy formally seized control of the reins of power and began cracking down violently on protests. Violence, however, didn’t capture the ferocity with which the oligarchy attacked the anarchists in the early going. This was before the anarchists were fairly organized—as organized as anarchists could be—and before the anarchists were competent in their tactics and diffuse in their strategy. The slaughter had been incredible. Computer slides, which the pilot viewed during his advanced qualification training, portrayed the anarchists as anti-American, anti-freedom, and pro-terrorist. The pilot had relished such a clear-cut portrayal. Turbulence never hit his ideology.  
The war had steered the pilot’s career to several military bases across the United States. He’d tweaked foreign military sales at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. He’d supervised a new regime of computer-based pilot training at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas. He’d pinned on his first silver oak leaf as executive officer of the 2d Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. And now he was at Scott Air Force Base. The B-21 complex at Scott offered tight security and a dedicated workforce. Like always, such war industry activity was pitched as a huge benefit for the economy. “Jobs, jobs, jobs,” the corrupt congresspeople would refrain, their coffers full of corporate donations. Out of Massachusetts, Texas, Louisiana, and Illinois, certainly Illinois had the worst anarchist infection. Though Boston, Austin, and New Orleans were no slouches. The anarchist virus had spread rapidly. It had to be dealt with decisively. The B-21 bomber was the perfect platform. Stealthy, fast, and relatively easy to control, it was the ideal platform to command during tail end of a flourishing career.  
“Did they start off with a cyber attack?” I asked myself. “Or did they just bomb the shit out of the place?” I didn’t even think about the hospital, below which the anarchist harbor had been located.  
With no time or space for empathy, I stood up, centered my spirits, and headed to the library.

I combed the alleyway and then knocked on the library door. The Morse code clanged sharply into the chill spring air. 

—  
.  
. — . 

I let the first three letters echo a bit before rapping them again on the door’s metal crossbeam. The inner metal cover of an eyehole slid open.  
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” the librarian said, a voice raspier than during our last encounter.  
“It’s been too long,” I replied.  
“What the hell kept you?” Her blue eyes twinkled in the circular dark.  
“Staying a step ahead of the pigs,” I replied.  
“Do you remember the password?”  
“Max Thunder.”  
“If the electricity comes back on, we can play a round on the old console.”  
“I’m just here for the books today.” I smiled.  
The eyehole closed.  
I waited. I felt exposed. I wanted to get inside or underground. What was taking the librarian so long? Normally she’d have opened the door by now, after having fumbled with the locks and the barricade.  
“Heads up!”  
I stepped back as dust and grit fell on my shadow.  
“Sorry,” the librarian apologized, her head poking out of a window one story above. She looked left down the alleyway towards the dead end. “Did you clear the area before knocking?”  
“Who do you think I am?” I replied.  
She raised an eyebrow, her face serious.  
“Okay. Yes, I checked the whole place. I know the rules.”  
The librarian flashed her eyes right and gave the open end of the alleyway a good stare.  
“I’ll be down in a moment,” she said.  
“Fair enough,” I muttered.  
The window closed above me.  
I stepped towards the door once more.  
I positioned myself to the right of the door, adjusted the straps on my knapsack, and rubbed the hilt of my pistol. I felt grateful that the anarchists had let me keep this one with all the upgrades Jameela and Jan had made to it. The door grinded and creaked in front of me, slowly inching left on rusty tracks. I slid off my knapsack. I stepped through the gap when it was just wide enough.  
“Don’t move. You know the routine.”  
I half expected a brash Hollywood sound effect to indicate that a shotgun was aimed at me.  
“I know the routine,” I replied. I tossed my knapsack several paces in front of me, took one step forward into the room, and stepped back against the wall. I slowly rotated, hands up. I stopped one hundred and eighty degrees later, legs spread, forehead against the cold brick.  
The door grinded closed to my right. Above me, a desk lamp swung upside down from the ceiling, a candle somehow balanced inside.  
After minutes of thorough searching my person I was free to explore.  
“Come ‘ere!” the librarian ordered with a grin, standing up. The librarian hugged me tightly, her bosom mashing up against my body armor. She smelled like pinesap. I loved it. “The shelves are yours, my dear.”  
I spent the afternoon and evening strolling among the shelves. The day was totally quiet, as if the entire city was one big library. I felt a world away from my problems, from the events of the past few days and the events to come. It was exactly the refresher I needed.  
“Come, sit. You’re not tired? Sit.” The librarian stood there, a tray of tea in hand. It reminded me of the tea I had enjoyed in the cage with Jan, Jameela, and company. Would I ever see them again? The librarian set down the tray, handed me a small tea glass, and sat behind her desk. “I’d ask you to tell me how things are going, but I know you’d just dodge the question,” she asserted.  
I smiled at her truths as I sat on the rug in front of her desk.  
“I can bring you a stool if you want,” she offered.  
“No, I need this. My back.” I laid down and let the ache fly from my lower lumbar. I sighed.  
“Want to meditate with me?” she offered.  
“Maybe in a bit.”  
“What did you read today?” She took a sip.  
“A little this, a little that. Mostly anarchist texts. I wanted to confirm the extent to which their practice jived with their doctrine.”  
“And?”  
“Lines up pretty well,” I stated. I raised my legs above my body, my heels now resting on the vertical flat end of the nearest bookshelf.  
“You find anarchism beautiful?” she asked.  
“Mmmm,” I replied.  
“We’re beyond complex, yet we favor the simplest. Just one of us post-petroleum humans is an aggregate of trillions and trillions of cells. In that sense we’re complex. But we’re also simple. Each of us is just a person.”  
“I’d argue that we’re also complex in another sense: all of us together create a complex system—”  
“And therein lies some of our beauty,” the librarian interrupted.  
I nodded in agreement.  
“By just examining us individually, the Task Force can’t predict how we’ll behave as a whole. Because, as individuals in a whole, we react according to each distinct situation, while always keeping the interests of the whole in mind.” She sipped loudly.  
I sighed. It was all so simple. The oligarchy was running on borrowed time. Just as capitalism had always been.  
“Doesn’t complexity beat them over the head in a sense?”  
“What?”  
“I mean…” She raised her tea glass to the light. Flecks of tea swirled in the honey liquid like leaves in a spring dust devil. “Okay, so they tend to look at us as a problem. Anarchism is a problem in their eyes.”  
“Anarchists are easy to understand—just address their political grievances,” I offered.  
“We’re simple in that sense. But the oligarchy insists on viewing us as having nefarious and multifarious parts, parts that scheme in the shadows, as corporate scribes might put it. They assign undue complexity where none exists.”  
“You have a good point.” I drank most of the contents of my glass. It was a small glass; the liquid wouldn’t hold off my thirst. I balanced the glass precariously on my stomach. Where had I seen that before?  
“Though local anarchists definitely evolved and developed some intricate revolutionary groups and programs as a result of the oppression they face.”  
“So their actions have actually created complexity where they wanted to avoid complexity to begin with?” I asked.  
“Exactly.”  
“Rough.”  
“Do you want music? I can play a little classical.” Music pulsed in harmony with a vibrant xylem. It was all in my memory, though. Memories of the anarchist harbor. Would the massive tree survive the bombing? Would its biomass feed future trees?  
“No, that’s okay.”  
The librarian rocked back and forth, sitting on thoughts.  
I brought my knees to my chest, stretched my lower back, and then returned my feet above me. I considered asking her how she was doing or whether or not she was getting enough food in these trying times, but I didn’t. Those questions were too mundane. Plus, I could see that she was antsy. She wanted to keep talking about the oligarchy. I fed her a softball: “In a sense the oligarchy’s tendency to see a complex problem where a simple problem exists is also a part of their bureaucracy.”  
“Yes! It’s a part of their corporate welfare.” She was eager. She walked to the front of her desk, sat on the edge, and leaned over me. I looked up at her. She continued. “Say the War Department issues a billion dollar contract to some corporate brute. The contract is for some bullshit, maybe technology demonstrations and assessments using big data to analyze the effectiveness of counterinsurgencies, or… global intelligence support services. Some bullshit…” She collected her thoughts.  
“They’d inevitably couch the latter in fancier terms, though,” I added. I smiled. I liked how her mouth moved from my upside-down viewpoint. Her chin looked like her nose and her nose looked like her chin.  
“Like?” she asked.  
“Like… acquisition of flexible, comprehensive cost effective solutions to support the Homeland’s need for fully integrated security, intelligence, and information operations.”  
The librarian laughed. “Cost effective,” she said.  
“Yeah…”  
“So I’m saying that they view the problem they’re facing, us anarchists, as inherently complex because they’re throwing so much money, resources, and time at us. Does that make sense?”  
“I follow you.”  
“Loud and clear?”  
“Loud and clear.”  
She wasn’t done. “Not only that, but what would happen to their layers of bureaucracy—staff positions, militarized strata, officials, assistants, executives—if they actually addressed our straightforward grievances? They’d have no purpose. They’d have no reason for getting up in the morning. Just like the early War of Terror; if Washington, D.C., had addressed the political or socio-economic grievances that gave rise to certain forms of extremism, the war machine would have been out of business.”  
“No purpose…” I repeated. “None, whatsoever. Though they’d find one. They’d aim for the next big ‘threat.’ Communism, terror, domestic terror, anarchism… They’d pick on anything next.” The truth felt weird, almost alien, passing over my lips.  
“Anything and anyone that keeps their coffers full.” She tilted her head slowly, nearly distorting my chin-nose perspective. She then stood up, ruining my game altogether.  
“But can’t that be said of the anarchists?” I asked. “That the anarchists only exist to get rid of the oligarchy?”  
The librarian stutter-stepped en route to a water tank in the dark corner behind her desk. She quickly recovered. “No. No, we exist to reset society. To wipe the slate and start fresh. No more war, no more corporate welfare, no more oligarchy.” She crossed a single stream of light that flickered through a blacked-out window. The stream twirled and played along the librarian’s hair and neck as she returned to her chair. In her hand was a big glass jar, which I guessed had once contained pasta sauce.  
“What did you read today?” I asked, returning the question she had asked me earlier. My question passed right through her, like a 7.62mm bullet through the wind.  
“And their choice to issue all these contracts to the U.S. war industry only exacerbates the problem. They get to a point where they’re flooded with information about their enemy, some of it valid and some erroneous. This reinforces their biases; they see all of this data and information and have no choice but to assume that the problem, us, is more complex than it really is.”  
“Well said. And it’s not like anarchist grievances are hidden. They state their demands time and time again.”  
“Yeah, but if the oligarchs acceded to our demands, they’d no longer be in positions of authority. Remember, they’ve got no real power. The people have the power. They, the oligarchs, only have authority, an authority granted to them by the people.”  
“They’re ruling on borrowed time. The people are awake, mad, and don’t want the oligarchs in power, pardon me, in authority any more.”  
“Which puts us back to square one.”  
I mulled over the librarian’s points. Were oligarchs dumb? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they just thought they could influence the population. They saw shit as more complex than it actually was, true. This applied to the Task Force’s intelligence analysts, too. They could say, ‘the anarchists want to live without hierarchy and they want to govern themselves.’ Or they could use their fancy gear to suck up anarchists’ communications and to try to follow anarchists with drones and space-based assets, taking the ensuing pattern of life as routine or somehow exemplifying anarchist existence, but they were really just seeing… people being. They’re really just seeing people living. This breakthrough clashed with my previous choices.  
I pushed my heels out farther.  
The librarian spoke. She too, it seemed, had been mulling over our discussion. “Now, when presented with our autonomy, our individual choices every second, the oligarchs are still incapable of understanding. They think that because we are a whole consisting of many parts we must then be unmanageable or prone to breaking down. They cannot fathom that we don’t want to be managed. They cannot fathom that our very unmanageable nature is an advantage allowing us to react according to the immediate circumstances while we still keep the wellbeing of the whole community in mind.”  
I was tired of talking about anarchism. I tried to wrap up our conversation. “They presume that unintended consequences will throw anarchists for a loop, because they still see the anarchists’ world through oligarch eyes, or, at least, a capitalist mindset.”  
“Agreed. They insist that failure is inevitable. They believe our inherent simple complexity, shall we call it, is unsustainable without centralized communication or, say, non-stop planning and coordination.”  
“Again, they think a malfunction on some level will throw a wrench in all our gears. But in reality a malfunction on any level is just another opportunity to react, another opportunity to deke and gain the upper hand.”  
The librarian stood up, placed her glass of water on the desk, lining up precisely over a ring where many dewy glasses had stood before. She pivoted towards me and extended her hands. I reached out and grabbed her forearms. She yanked me up and together we swam among the shelves once more. For those moments among the shelves I forgot my troubles. My choices and my actions, the oligarchy and its oppression, all evaporated. We set sail on the pages’ vessels, and navigated through the icy waves of the North Atlantic and the blinding heat of the Sahara. One book planted a sapling in my heart. Another leveled my forest without a second thought, the pages approaching my woodlands from both sides, like tanks in the Ardennes amid a harsh winter. One book passed through the librarian’s solar system, narrowly missing the convictions of her friendly gas giant. Another book encamped in our minds, refusing to leave. We’d have to tackle its obstinacy down the road, maybe before bed with the window open to a new season’s breeze. Part of me hoped the book wouldn’t take flight before such time. I could only hope. I could only hope I’d make it that far.  
Soon our romp was over. We returned reluctantly, even though we were seduced, medicated, and sated. My problems condensed and returned to me. My brow glistened as I thought of the days ahead.  
“May I crash here tonight?”  
She tsked twice, but then reconsidered. “Okay. Alas, okay. But please leave before dawn. I must be careful these days. You understand.”  
“I understand. Do you need anything from out there? I could drop something off tomorrow night.”  
She shook her head and whispered a quiet “No thank you.” She offered her hand, which I accepted kindly. She walked me to the stairwell in the back. It was damp but accommodating. A weathered cot was set up beneath the bottom steps.  
I smiled. “No. Thank you.”  
“Don’t thank me. Just do the right thing.”  
She returned moments later with a wool blanket and a fat blue candle.  
“You miss them,” the librarian noted.  
I didn’t reply.  
“Why don’t you get in touch with them? Try to regroup?”  
I didn’t reply.  
“I’m sure they miss you,” she coaxed.  
I offered her a smile. Maybe it was that simple.  
She left me to my thoughts, but not before granting me another warm embrace.  
I sat down. The cot creaked loudly. I stared at the blue candle. I had never seen that hue before. At the same time it was deeper than the darkest sea and more brilliant than Barnard’s Star in the infrared. I settled on calling it ‘ultramarine,’ but I was sure that was inaccurate. I plotted my moves for the following day as I stared.  
I woke up around 0400 in pitch darkness. A steady drip emanated from the steps above me. The door to the library eased open without a sound. The librarian was nowhere to be seen, but I knew she was watching. She was always watching her roost. A note on the desk instructed me how to exit without setting off any alarms or traps. I read it four times so I wouldn’t make a mistake. Exiting took a shade under ten minutes. I waved goodbye to the library door. I pictured the librarian smiling as she watched from inside. After sneaking down the alleyway and leaving the smell of pinesap behind me, I turned the corner and headed down to the old post office on South Laramie Avenue. The shelves’ll miss me. I was confident.  
The walk to Little Village was leisurely. I spent much of it on the old Pink Line. The walk was refreshing. It allowed me to check my emotions and prepare for the days ahead.  
“Purple. My favorite color, but it doesn’t show up too well on cement.” It’ll have to do, I thought. The crayon felt warm and fuzzy in my pocket. I thought back to my youth, when crayons made more frequent and light-hearted appearances. I withdrew the crayon and snapped it in two.  
A bird was chirping. I wondered if he had eaten plastic. The neighborhood was calm.  
I stopped to tie my shoe across the street from Limas Park. I looked to the house on my right as I untied my laces. A tree sprawled across the lawn. Its crown rested inside the living room of the house. By the looks of it, it had blown down very recently. The smell of fresh soil wafted from the underside of its exposed roots. The house seemed abandoned. I wondered how many people still lived in this neighborhood. I wondered where the anarchists were. I looked behind me. Calm.  
As I tightened the laces on my shoe, I let half of the crayon slip from my fingers. I pulled back on the laces and then, lifting the heel of my shoe slightly, ground the crayon into the sidewalk. I started on the other shoe, repeating the procedure, grinding the second half of the purple crayon into the sidewalk. Laces tied, I stood up.  
I walked north, calmly, matching the ambience.  
The name of the street reminded me of a character from a story my pop used to read to me when I was growing up. Trumbull… Trumbull… Trunchbull? I couldn’t remember exactly.  
Now it was a waiting game. 

I approached an old safehouse from the north. The alleyway was wet. A familiar stench dripped in the air: fecal matter and rotting corpses. I turned back. Fresh excrement could have meant recent human activity. I fell back to an alleyway across the street. I waited. The sun drooped. The front-left edge of the dumpster to my right poked at the sun as she moseyed past. I shimmied backwards into a cocoon of cardboard and broken furniture. I embraced the wait.  
What was Violet up to?  
How had she assessed me? I had done my best when I was in her company. I never threatened or raised my voice. At least I don’t think I did. I never insulted or demeaned anyone. I was never exasperating or mean, despite all of our trials. I could see her giving me her stamp of approval: “You didn’t quit. Ever. You kept going. Always. Alone or in a group, you are a force.” No bullshit, her heart was good.  
The distinct squeal of a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle bounced into the alleyway. I scooted farther back, tucking myself behind the adjacent dumpsters. How many times had I been in this situation before? Too many. I looked forward to the day when I’d be able to walk the streets without fear. Or at least, in fear of something else.  
A mercenary patrol ground up the east-west road in front of me. I wondered if its occupants had even bothered scanning the alleyway. I angled my head against the inside of my arm and refocused my eyes across the street. The MRAP brought up the rear.  
After three hours of observation I started stretching. I had learned early in the war that it was necessary to warm up after lengthy periods of inactivity. One cramp could cost me my life. After about ten minutes of slow stretches, I emerged from my cardboard den like an old hedgehog waking from a refreshing hibernation. After checking to make sure no vehicles were coming, I sprinted across the street.  
A lone bullet rang out in the dusk. A sniper. Not a good one either. They lacked discipline, shooting at a running target with which they had no beef.  
Tonight I’ll have to be careful, I thought as I ran down the putrid alleyway. 

The old safehouse was a two-story brick single-family home. The industrial warehouses to its west, north, and south loomed colossal, ready to swallow it whole. I wondered how the original owner of the house had protected the home from being engulfed.  
I hopped the fence. It must have been a classic white picket fence at some point. Maybe four years ago? Maybe five? I felt uneasy using an old safehouse—had it been compromised?—so I proceeded cautiously.  
Conversing with myself put me at ease. “Of course I’m scared,” I said. “Everyone’s scared.” “You’re scared?” I asked. “Yeah,” I said. “Respect fear, tackle it. Learn about what’s causing your fear. And we’ll go from there.” It wasn’t revelatory advice, but it did calm me down a bit. At least my chest heaved a little less.  
I slunk down the side of the house, scanned the empty backyard, and came to rest against the frame of a screen door. It opened without a problem, but its hinges rifled a creak into the still air, putting me on edge once more. One of my many keys—I patted myself on the back for remembering which one—fit into the lock within the doorknob. The key turned smoothly, but the second lock, a bolt lock, shoulder high, stopped me from entering. It was a classic tumbler lock. Ah, the art of the pin tumbler. I reached into one of the pockets on my vest. My pick kit unrolled in the palm of my hand without a sound. My training came to me smoothly. The final tumbler was the hardest; it took me almost a minute to find and align. I thought back to one particularly grueling day with my shooting instructor. In the morning he had me opening tumbler locks under live fire. After lunch he had me remedying a jammed rifle while skipping rope. Odd training, but effective. I looked down. I sensed it a split second before it happened: all of the pins had aligned with the shear line. The plug turned.  
I withdrew my tools, rolled up the velvet rug in my palm, and entered the safehouse. The kitchen smelled musty. That was a good sign. Nobody had been here in a while. I locked the door behind me and let out a sigh of relief.  
I woke up in the basement of the old safehouse. I had made it through the night without incident. If the sniper had tried to follow me, she or he had not succeeded. As I stared up at the stucco ceiling, I weighed some of the anarchist victories that had predated my arrival in their harbor: clearing the Rainbow Beach field house and gym; Operation Tender Hooley where anarchists swept through the northern portion of Millennium Park; and the heavy losses holding the southern stretch of Grant Park. Nothing but ‘roided up mercenaries there. Not even a hint of rules of engagement. A real free for all.  
Was I okay?  
Yes.  
I had learned over the years that command positions eroded your soul. They chewed you up. Nobody in his or her right mind could handle more than a twelve-month rotation. That’s where anarchism came in. They didn’t have commanders. They fanned out with a common objective and adapted to the evolving situation. They were not constrained like the Task Force was. Anarchists didn’t have to wait for orders or approval. They reacted and adapted. On a good day, they were as tough to defeat as a thick fog. You could swing at them, but they were going nowhere.  
I rolled over.  
“Still, the losses got to them,” I whispered. “Some of their finest operators are no longer around.”  
The haunt parked between Violet’s eyes visited me.  
I sat up on the basement couch and shook my head like a French Mastiff. I patted my pockets, stood up, stretched my thighs, and sneaked upstairs. Never exit the way you enter, I recalled as I headed through the kitchen and into the garage. The garage air was cold. It bit my neck. Morning light wiggled under the garage door, illuminating the near wall. A yellow ladder leaned against the wall. A bike hung vertically at chest height. The rounded rear of a paintball gun stuck out from a plastic crate.  
A vehicle’s deep exhaust roared nearby. I froze. I was just north of West Cermak Road. I hated being so close to a major thoroughfare, but this safehouse was close to my next objective: the driveway of the house behind the auto repair shop, two blocks east. I stayed frozen until the sound of deep exhaust became inaudible.  
I took my time rummaging in the garage. I had a personal mission to complete before I took off. I rummaged my way methodically around the inside walls of the garage. Two-thirds of the way across the far wall I came across a suitable assistant: sawdust. Now I could go to the bathroom. Flushing toilets with clean drinking water and then treating the excrement with chemicals was a senseless practice not befitting post-revolution life. The anarchists had rubbed off on me in good ways and bad. One of the ways we saw eye-to-eye was in our approach to the natural world.  
My belt buckle leaned cold against my right ankle. I finished up and stood up. I applied a few heaping handfuls of sawdust to the bucket. I’d tip the bucket outside the house. Eventual fertilizer, I thought, knowing time would provide the other ingredients (temperature, moisture, and oxygen) to turn the blend into manure.  
“I’ll have to return and check on my pile,” I told myself as I emerged from the garage. I rolled to my feet and adopted my homeless gait. Aimless and weathered, my gait told any onlookers that I was just another member of the oppressed classes. Just another Joe looking to survive beneath the boot.  
I walked out of the alleyway and towards my next objective.  
Roots roiled the sidewalk. I smiled. At least the Department of Public Works was no longer able to grind down portions of the natural world. These days, the DPW only emerged to fix infrastructure deemed valuable to the Task Force, the Department of Homeland Security, or the oligarchs themselves.  
The sun winked at me as she climbed the morning sky. Not a cloud dared contend with her. The sky, powder blue, seemed free of aircraft. Curious. I thought back to the early days of the war when the oligarchy had tried to impose ‘order’: attack jets streaking across the sky; explosions at every meal; smoldering holes grinning along the streets; caustic black clouds scowling; flak rattling throughout the night; and flares—extra suns—endowing dawn and dusk with outworldly glows.  
One screw kept the sign for the auto repair shop from falling hard against the uneven pavement. I staggered drunkenly around to the back. A white chalk mark adorned the mailbox at the end of the driveway.  
“Bingo,” I hiccupped.  
I looked up at the sun. She was relaxed. I judged I had less than an hour to make it to the bus station. I would be late, even if I walked quickly. 

I was second in line at the ramshackle bus station. A private security guard stood next to the door puffing his chest out. He eyed me for a minute and then went back to scrolling through his mobile device.  
“How can I help you?” a gaunt clerk asked the woman in front of me.  
“How are you today?” the woman in front of me asked her, stepping up to the counter.  
The clerk didn’t reply.  
“Yes,” the customer continued, “I‘d like to purchase a bus pass.”  
“May I interest you in our FlexFreedom option?” the clerk asked mechanically.  
“I’d just like something simple. Do you have any options where I can put a number of rides on the pass? And I don’t want them to expire at the end of the month.”  
“How about our LibertyMore pass? You get ten rides for the low price of—”  
“Does that expire at the end of the month?”  
“It does,” the clerk replied. She rolled her clammy lips, summoning moisture laced with confection.  
“I also need more than ten rides. Can I put twenty rides on the pass and use them whenever I want?”  
“We don’t have that option. I’m sorry.”  
Customer service had dropped off precipitously ever since the municipality privatized the last bit of public transportation.  
“Why is purchasing a bus pass so hard?”  
“Miss?”  
“Let me see…” The customer perused the options on an electronic board above the counter.  
“If you’ll just step aside, I can help the next customer.”  
“I don’t want to step aside. If I step out of line, I lose my place. Let me just take a second and look at the options.”  
“Miss, I’ll have to ask you to step aside, please.”  
“Just give me one second and I can make a decision.”  
“Carl!”  
An obese man whose head looked inflated beyond the containment capacity of human skin waddled out of a back room.  
The customer sighed, behind it forty years of defeat. “Never mind.” The customer limped away.  
I looked at the gaunt clerk who blinked at me in return. I shrugged at her and followed the departing customer.  
“Ma’am?” I asked.  
“Leave me alone,” the customer said loudly.  
“Maybe I can help you,” I offered.  
She collapsed onto a dirty plastic seat like a bag of leaves settling on a wheelbarrow.  
Slowly, I sat down beside her. She was rummaging in her overstuffed carry-on bag.  
“I thought I had an old bus pass in here…”  
“Ma’am?” I asked.  
She stuck her face farther into the bag and whispered, “What took you so long?”  
I leaned in, pretending to assist in the forage. “I couldn’t rush it. I was late.”  
“I was loitering here for too long. I had to make a move to the counter or they’d’ve kicked me out.”  
“I understand.”  
“Found it!” she declared, raising up a piece of paper. “I knew I had it in here somewhere.” She rose with a little spring to her step. “Let’s go,” she whispered, clutching her bag with two hands, like a pregnant woman caressing her third-trimester belly. She limped towards the door.  
The private security guard manning the door looked up from his mobile device. “You two leave, you can’t come back for twenty-four hours. Understand?”  
Violet flicked the piece of paper. “I just won twelve bucks on a scratch card. I’m gonna have me some breakfast.”  
The security guard looked at me blankly.  
“Understand,” I muttered.  
The security guard clacked the door opener on the wall with his elbow and returned his attention to his app of choice.  
Violet and I shuffled along the sidewalk together. I wanted to ask her about the anarchist harbor. Did anything remain? Was Bala alive? I wanted to ask her about anarchist plans. Surely the anarchists were regrouping, no? As the weight of my decisions rose inside of me like an unruly mob, I asked her about reading, my distraction of choice.  
“How do you organize your reading notes?”  
She looked up at me. She might have been too proud to say she missed me, but her eyes told me everything. “I like to organize mine by topic.” Maybe talking about reading was an outlet we both employed.  
“I see.”  
“Let me clarify, each piece of scrap paper with my notes has the author’s last name displayed prominently in the corner. But they’re organized in stacks according to topic. It helps a lot when piecing together bigger ideas.”  
“Did your notes survive the bombing?”  
She nodded. “I don’t keep my notes in the harbors. They’re hiding in plain sight.”  
I laughed. I wondered where she had stashed them. If she died, how long would it take for others to find them?  
Violet almost read my thoughts. “If the Task Force kills me, my spirit will watch over my book notes. I’d love to see the reaction of the kid who finds my cache.” She laughed and then added, “I hope it’s a kid who finds ’em.”  
“How often are you able to review your notes?” I asked.  
“Not often enough. I like to review them at least once a year. Keep in mind, this isn’t some procedure that I developed over the course of the war.” She shook her head. “No, I’ve been doing this pretty much all my life.”  
The mid-morning breeze pushed a wave of plastic debris across our path. We pivoted in unison like two deer, routing around the plastic pollution mid-step.  
“Your notes are not in a digital format?”  
“I guess I’m old fashioned. Most are in an old shoebox.”  
“An old shoebox hiding in plain sight,” I wondered aloud.  
“What about you?”  
“Me? I have no public stash. I keep my notes up here.” I tapped my right temple.  
“Unreliable,” Violet cautioned.  
“Hmm?”  
“No, it’s not you. It’s just that we’re all unreliable in our memories. It’s better to have hard copies of your notes somewhere, so that you can consult the stash for inspiration or wisdom whenever you feel like.”  
“My stash was destroyed over a year ago. I’m working to reconstitute it.”  
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Violet’s voice conveyed great anguish. She changed the subject hastily. “You reread books a lot?”  
“I try to if I really like one.”  
“Doesn’t that cramp your style?” she asked. “I mean, how can you read many books if you’re always rereading?”  
“I guess my goal isn’t to read a ton. I’d say my goal is to understand, to gain wisdom, not to plow through a bookshelf a week.”  
“I see,” Violet said. “I learn something new every day.”  
I couldn’t tell if she was referring to me or to her life in general. 

I closed the door quietly. I was late for story time.  
All the faces, a couple of them familiar, were calm and kind, though only a few looked up as I entered the apartment. I was exhausted. The floor was crowded. We decided to stand by the door. Violet waved off several offers from the crowd to sit among them.  
How they made these bland rooms, so plain in their design and layout, into warm hearths of coziness, I’d never know. From the door behind me I felt the cold chill of fresh air. From the other end of the room, through a bank of heating ducts, I felt the warm pant of a nearby kiln. In the center of the room, a battery of anarchists sat behind a drawing table, a dim reading light clipped to the far edge. An owlish woman, complete with horned rimmed glasses, was recording a bard’s words into a crumbling ledger while her peers stared at the bard, rapt.  
The bard was an elderly woman I had never seen before. I’d have remembered such an angelic face. Swaddled in blankets, quilts, and throws, the bard recounted: “It’s not marked on any maps. Most oligarch maps don’t have it either. A few call it a nature reserve, but that’s about it. Only the top tier of oligarchs, a couple handfuls, if that, have mention of it. NGA and their other agencies of course know about it…” These fleeting words from her hoarse voice grabbed greater attention than a centennial comet. Her audience shuffled closer, flocking to her feet, bathed in flickering candles. A few of the anarchists knitted, a few massaged one another, but all remained engrossed. “Its original name can be best translated as renaissance, but its original name does not matter to them. Just as Native names never truly matter to the colonists.” As she spoke her dark eyes tick-tocked across the room, each sweep gaining more and more information. She gave the impression that she had better visual acuity and perception than the aforementioned NGA. “Today’s prophecy speaks of a hundred years of toxic desert, of a lake worn dry. Shells of trees and skeletons of animals once known, once classified… now all alien on unfamiliar terrain.” A wisp lolled through the air and landed among her layers of blankets. “A lone man walks along the wasteland. Each footfall kicks up hot dust, no matter how gently he treads. He is doomed to die a painful death. The air, riding each breath he takes, is laced with radioactive particles. He is well aware of these circumstances, yet he lumbers on. He comes across a turtle. The turtle is parched. Each word she utters is a struggle, but it is her duty, a duty she gladly accepts, to pass on the knowledge contained in her shell. Knowledge, like a tree’s rings, accumulated over time with the patience of no time at all. Phrases fell from the turtle’s mouth. ‘This was first a bowl, then a superpredador raped it, and raped it again.’” Her words became softer and softer as she spoke.  
The owlish woman with the crumbling ledger stopped writing so the scratch of her tiny pencil on the parchment would not override the bard’s wisdom.  
I strained to hear the conclusion of the tale. The words coming out of the woman’s mouth fell on incapable ears. I heard nothing, though the crowd kneeling at the bard’s feet nodded and gasped appreciatively.  
“What did the woman say?” I asked.  
Violet told me.  
“She said all that?”  
Violet smiled, patted me on both shoulders, and planted a kiss on my forehead.  
“What is your call?” I asked.  
“Come. We’ve got much work to do.”


	18. Chapter 18

I WAS SURPRISED AT how easily I squeezed into the ventilation duct on the roof of the post office. I shed my anti-electro-optical/infrared blanket and stuck it to the top of the duct with double-sided adhesive.   
“How long do we wait?” I asked.   
“You were in Air Force communications, right?” Violet asked in response. A square gap in the duct paneling framed her against the purple sky.  
I raised an eyebrow as I sat back against the cold metal.  
Violet clarified, “So, because of your experience, you’re in charge of monitoring their comms. Gain some situational awareness for our unit and then join us below.” Rocking a massive smile, she handed me a headset attached to a listening device. The headset looked flimsy in the low light. A heavy battery made the listening device feel like a brick in my hands, but the unwieldy nature of the device belied its incredible capabilities.   
“The importance of play,” I reminded myself, as she closed the metal panel.  
I donned the headset and turned on the ground-air listening device. Soon I was eavesdropping on an RC-290 reconnaissance aircraft. Two men were laughing and arguing:  
\- The dude is no hero, Markarian. No hero.  
\- MARKARIAN: All I’m saying is that heroes are more a product of their situation than anything else.   
\- No way. It’s one hundred percent what’s inside that counts. It’s a person’s innate traits that affect history the most.  
\- MARKARIAN: But the situation is the key.   
\- You ass. It’s times like these I wish I had a genie.  
\- MARKARIAN: Orientalist douche. You know that’s an Arabic word?   
\- I’d summon a floating urinal.   
\- MARKARIAN: Crazy. I go stalls.   
\- Stalls? Wuss. Better than the back of the plane though.  
\- MARKARIAN: Wuss! Great eighties word, Tyng. 

“Take it easy,” an officer butted in from the front end. “It’s a long ride from Greenville to Chicago.” The Greenville-McKinney-Fort Worth triangle, including cities like Richardson and Garland within its limits, was a hive of U.S. war industry production. The RC-290 that I was listening to was en route to assist in the pacification of Chicago. Years ago, Markarian and Tyng had been 1A8, airborne linguists—their specialty, listening to ground communications and pinpointing the location of bad guys. Tyng and Markarian were now contractors, lured back on the job with fat paychecks.  
“Roger,” Tyng replied, typing quickly. “Just us now.”  
“I can see that,” Markarian replied.   
I assumed Tyng had kicked the officer off the net.  
“You know the Mayor of Bloomington combs his bush?”   
“Jesus,” Markarian said, laughing. “Keep that one tight to the chest, will you? Anyone in the front end catches you snooping on a mayor, and you’ll have to answer to the Colonel.”   
“Bullshit. Wait,” Tyng said, pausing. “What’s an Arabic word?”   
“Jesus, you’re slow.”   
Tyng laughed. It came across crackly in my headset.   
“Genie. Jinn in Arabic,” Markarian stated. “Weren’t you at DLI?”   
“Ha! Different years, different courses. Plus, I was recycled back several times.”  
A seat scrunched. Someone sitting up, maybe.  
“Time on target?” Markarian asked slowly.   
“One hour,” Tyng answered.  
Markarian said sarcastically, “You think when they upgraded from the RC-135 they would’ve included some better insulation or something.” I pictured his breath poofing off the screen in front of him.  
Tyng laughed. “Yeah… well…”   
“Time to piss,” Markarian stated. I heard him lock the keyboard, angle the chair on its runner, and stand up.

I adjusted my feet and rolled onto my back, using my right hand to keep my headset snug onto my ears. I looked out from one of the slits in the ventilation duct. My heart pounded thinking of what stood in front of me today. I adjusted the blanket on the roof of the ventilation duct, checked my antenna, and then sat back, waiting for the crude contractors to start talking again. 

“Still sting when you piss?” Tyng asked when Markarian had returned.   
“I can’t believe I ever told you that,” Markarian said. “The joys of extended periods in confined quarters.”  
“Still sting?”  
“No, I got that taken care of,” replied Markarian.   
Tyng laughed harshly. “Well, stop banging garden gnomes sans rubber and you won’t keep running into that problem.”  
Silence.   
Someone was typing away. I pictured green-gloved fingers, a few keyboard commands, three lines crossed, a weak triangulation formed.   
“Need any help?” Tyng asked.   
How many seats away was he from Markarian? I wondered.  
“No thanks,” Markarian replied.   
I slung my knapsack off my back, and pulled out a slim laptop. I plugged the listening device into the laptop. Now able to monitor the contractors’ computers, I noticed Markarian exit out of a private net he had with Tyng. Markarian then called up several ground units in St. Louis. After a minute of conferring with an incompetent private, he was put through to a corporal. The corporal’s voice was thick as myrica shrub and as hoary as a mighty sequoia. Perhaps he was one of the recent enlistees—the maximum enlistment age now forty-six—one of the millions in the oligarchs’ outsourced and automated economy with no job prospects. The man forwarded several coordinates to Markarian’s screen, courtesy of two Missouri Army National Guard signals intelligence units operating on Knob Lick hilltops. Markarian conveyed his thanks to the Army corporal and then jumped back onto a private net with Tyng.   
He was greeted with a written message from Tyng: Two UAV below us at 30K. I’ll see what they got.   
“Anything?” Tyng asked. “Any known U.S. persons?”  
“The corporal was a huge help,” Markarian said.   
I looked down. Three lines of triangulation were now a formidable five. No, now six, as a nearby drone had just contributed another line.   
“Gimme a minute,” Markarian said.  
“Take your time,” Tyng offered.   
It seemed these contractors knew when to joke around and when to put the mission first. It took Markarian four minutes, the extra time needed to confirm anarchist activity in the area. The mercenaries aboard the RC-290 were recording all of the St. Louis anarchists’ radio comms. Did those anarchist units think their cryptography was impenetrable? With audio confirmation, Markarian forwarded the triangulated coordinates of the anarchists to a private security corporation that was in charge of the greater St. Louis area.   
“Nice work,” Tyng praised.   
Markarian sniffed. Cold air often made noses run at that altitude.   
I checked my watch. I’d head down into the post office in a couple minutes. I adjusted my legs. The input plug on my headset popped out of the handheld device. I popped it back in and then checked all the other wires in my lap.  
“Of what? You kicking my ass?” Markarian asked Tyng.   
I wondered what the question had been.  
“FDR,” Tyng argued. “His innate heroics helped guide the nation through World War Two.”  
“True to an extent. True to an extent,” Markarian challenged. “But his character was forged through circumstances: battling polio, recognizing the inequalities of the 1920s, going through the Great Depression—”  
“He responded like no other to tremendous demands. And you think others would have been as successful in his shoes?”  
“I think others could have risen to the occasion,” Markarian parried.   
“Given certain inherent traits,” Tyng insisted.  
“Traits forged by circumstances,” Markarian insisted. “FDR, for existence, pardon me, for example, was a tough SOB. Even dealing with party politics sure as hell helped him become the right person for the job.”  
Though this task sucked—sitting in a cramped ventilation shaft—I was thankful that these old contractors had stopped the crude talk and were now talking history. Either way, it was better than listening to two young airmen talking about the latest video game. These contractors were somewhat brighter, at least.  
Tyng laughed. “I feel like we’re going around in circles. Because most people in FDR’s shoes would’ve stayed out of the public eye and chilled at Warm Springs.”  
“We will be going around in circles in less than an hour,” Markarian noted with a chuckle, referencing the figure eight pattern the reconnaissance plane often laid in the sky.   
“You see what I’m saying though?”  
“Yesss,” Markarian said. I caught a resigned patience underlying his tone. He changed the subject. “You’re in line for a TDY to Colombia after this?”  
“I don’t know. We’ll see what the orders say,” Tyng said flatly.   
“As the gods will it,” Markarian joked.   
“I’m hoping for something less intense. Maybe next door at Punto Fijo.”  
“You’ll never get it. Do they still get hazard pay?”   
“They do. The revolutionaries die hard,” Tyng said without pity.  
“Either way.”  
“Yeah… Either way.”   
A bit of turbulence shook the airframe. Racks of hardware vibrated into my earpiece.  
“Sagan said we invest far-off places with a certain romance,” Markarian recalled. “This appeal has been crafted well by natural selection as an essential element to survival.”  
“What are you saying?” Tyng asked. “That I only dig it because it’s relatively exotic?”  
“No. I’m just quoting my man. You ever think of getting a desk job? Maybe try for Senior Executive Service?” Markarian asked.  
Tyng laughed. “You know I used to loathe them, what, getting ridiculous pay and way more perks. No thanks. I’d rather shoot my taint off.”   
“Logistical nightmare aside, point well-taken.”  
“But now I’m not so sure,” Tyng asserted. “It’s a possibility. It’s tempting.”  
“When’s your contract up?”  
“I can re-up later this year. So we’ll see.”   
I popped out my earpiece and stored my gear in my knapsack. I then donned my EO/IR blanket, exited the ventilation duct, and shuffled downstairs. Today was the day of the big attack on Task Force assets all across Chicago, and I was just trying to take it one step at a time.

Violet gathered our squad in the back of an old post office for a final recap before we stepped into our transportation. I leaned against the inside of the metal post office boxes as she waited for everyone to quiet down. Ours was a tight group of eleven people. Anarchists, mostly. It took a few moments for us to calm down, since everyone was electric with anticipation. Today was D-Day. (A-Day, some had taken to calling it, because A stood for anarchist and rhymed with May, as in May Day.) The cold metal of the boxes caressed my neck. I wondered about the other squads. Today’s big attack was strictly compartmentalized; I bet even Violent didn’t know all the planned operations. How many other squads were there? How many had already started their portion of the attack?   
“This isn’t your traditional pre-game speech,” Violet led off.   
The final bits of chitchat quieted.   
She looked down at the old M1 .30 caliber rifle in her hands. “I hate guns.” Her voice clanged off the rows of antique brass boxes. “When I was little, my pops took me to see a professional football game in Montreal. We were right on the sidelines, right behind the bench. I don’t remember much about the game, except for an argument between two coaches on the same team. There was an offensive tackle, their star player. They’d spent millions on him, but he was really playing poorly. The offensive line coach wanted to take him out and give another kid a chance, a kid who had really earned his shot. But the head coach overruled the o-line coach, and kept the star player in the game.”  
She shifted her weight and adjusted her rifle, leaning the butt stock on a mail cart. She was in her element.  
“The head coach had invested so much cash and time, let alone prestige, into the player that he was unable to bench the underperforming athlete. The coach’s stubbornness escalated, to the detriment of the team.” Violet took a deep breath. “Point being… the costs, both money and time, that the coach had sunk into the athlete pushed him toward a shitty decision. That’s them. Chicago Cook County. The Task Force. They’ve tossed so much time, effort, and cash into their gizmos, public relations, and corporate partners that they’re blind to their deficiencies. Well, guess what we’re going to do today?”  
“We’re gonna exploit it,” came a voice from the pack.   
“You bet your ass we’re going to exploit it. Now, I can’t tell you much, but what I can tell you is that we’ve got a multi-pronged attack kicking into high gear in”—she glanced at a watch strapped to a belt loop on her hip—“forty minutes.”  
I nodded. I bounced on my feet a bit. It was hard to contain the excitement. Do or die, I told myself.   
“I don’t want any hooting and hollering,” Violet explained. “I don’t want any cheering or any bluster. We all know our roles and what we need to do to get the job done. Harness all your energy, focus for the next forty-eight hours, and before you know it we’ll be sitting on a rooftop somewhere, sipping some cold suds and planning the next step.” Violet inhaled through a broad smile. “Deal?” she asked.  
“Deal!”  
We stepped out of the post office loading dock and into the back of our vehicle. Loaded down with weapons, we clinked and clattered. One rifle clanged against the vehicle’s heavy metal door as the last of us boarded. The vehicle quaked as the rear doors shut.


	19. Chapter 19

T-SHIRTS FROM BANGLADESH, copper from Chile, plastic toys from China, coffee from Ethiopia, trousers from Honduras, wine from New Zealand, tomatoes from Spain. I now added Chicago anarchists to the list of items that traveled via shipping container.   
Before standardized shipping containers took off as the premier form of transferring tangible capital, it was, of course, the people and their muscles who moved most of the goods. Stevedores juggled wooden pallets and crates of all sizes, pushing them with shoulders and dragging them with steel hooks until tucked into place aboard a ship. Lives were inevitably lost from workplace accidents and plain old exhaustion, but that was no matter. The capitalists had a bigger problem: the whole process took too damn long. Time was money, and more money needed to be made. As they did throughout history, the war machine and Wall Street aligned, this time in order to standardize the shipping container. The Pentagon was ramping up its war in Southeast Asia, and it needed matériel, goods, and provisions there as soon as possible. Entrepreneurs backed by capital and courage entered the fold, standardizing the container size among shipping and trucking companies while Wall Street pushed from behind, easing red tape and encouraging a swift Pentagon response. On the way back from Vietnam, empty shipping containers made stops in the upstart economic hubs of East Asia. Loaded with consumer goods, the containers returned to the United States, only to begin the journey once more. By the end of the war, the containers were the same size, able to fit together aboard a ship and able to fit snugly on the back of a truck. No more hooks and grunting longshoremen. Instead, massive cranes and transporters moved containers, which were on the ocean in a matter of minutes. Computers running integrated logistics systems tracked each container as it moved around the globe. I doubted they were tracking us now. I smiled. The shipping container, once one of the greatest enablers of global capitalism, was now transporting the anarchist rebels.  
I looked around. My peers looked calm, but my head raced. Had I covered all the bases? Anarchists needed information to help plan the attack. Information. The war industry euphemized such knowledge as ‘intelligence’, but it was just helpful information. Where in the Naval Support Activity Strough compound was the command center? Were all the facilities contiguous within the compound? Did they have separate power sources? What did the entire complex look like from above? From inside? Where was the armory? Where was the greatest concentration of personnel?   
Exactly how many security personnel were there? What were their daily routines? What were their habits? What were their vices? Did one tend to nod off at certain hours? Did another occupy most of his days in a guard tower staring at a mobile device? How many security personnel manned each guard tower? Were they a likely combination of mercenary and military police? Where were the roving patrols? What were their routes? From where did they leave and where did they return? How long were the shifts? What unknown air assets were lurking behind the walls? What was the order of battle? If the guards and security personnel were neutralized, who would rise to defend the installation? Would the average computer technician (‘cyber warrior’) pick up a weapon or surrender without a struggle? Were there any X factors? Any hostages that could be brought out at the last minute? If there were, what kind of shape would they be in? Would they be healthy enough to move? To evacuate on their own two feet? Could Strough personnel call for reinforcements? Where would the reinforcements come from? What direction? How long would it take for them to arrive?   
Our vehicle swayed and shuttered.   
Relax, I told myself. All was well; planning had taken months and months.   
The anarchists could never have done it without the ripe circumstances, I thought. It was as if the kettle was boiling, and all they had to do was pour. The pieces fell into place rapidly and efficiently. Swimmers, divers, joggers, sailboats, turncoats, idle pub conversations, moles, long-range binoculars, hacks, drones, open source intelligence like library maps, and more had all contributed to the planning process.   
Putting the pieces in place had been a tedious and careful balance. A rapid or sustained increase in activity would have tipped off the Task Force that anarchist plotting was afoot. Security would then have been increased, routines changed, codes altered, and valuables moved. To some extent, time had been on the anarchists’ side. They planned carefully and thoroughly. Violet and her crew had benefitted from years of painstaking anarchist efforts. It had been a team effort. Others might have argued that time was on the oligarchy’s side. The oligarchy just had to sit back, keep their eyes opened, and refine their defenses. I disagreed with that assessment.  
“How’s your head, airman? You centered?” It felt like ages since I had heard that voice, but only days had passed. My old shooting instructor was standing near the far wall, his left foot extended slightly, as if toeing the shooting line. I walked over to him.   
“You know, you’re the first one to ask,” I replied. “Have we talked about my time in the military before?”  
“You were selected, in part, because of your background,” he said, shaking my hand.  
“Did you have a role in recruiting me?” I asked.  
“A small role. Violet did most of the legwork. The final decision was unanimous.”  
“Thank you,” I whispered.   
His ears perked up like a Dobermann. He nodded slightly, respectfully. “You’re giving the pep-talk today.”  
“Huh? I thought Violet just gave it.”   
“Sort of. She gave more of a briefing. We want you to give the pep-talk.”  
“Awesome,” I said. Today was the big day. No more rehearsals, no more planning, no more waiting, no more hesitating. Our vehicle sputtered and the walls quivered. All eleven of us shuffled to maintain our balance. Someone grabbed my arm. I turned away from the instructor. I knew before my head swung around that it was Violet. I could tell by her grip.  
“I want you to know something,” Violet said rapidly. Her furrowed forehead told me she was dead serious. “I only scare people when we’re on friendly turf. I want you to know that I’d never scare you on a real operation.”  
“I know. You don’t have to tell me.”  
“I’d never sacrifice an operation with my games,” she vowed. “Playfulness is important. It’s vital. But no jokes today.”  
“I understand.” I then tried to lighten the mood, as much for myself as for her. “You smell good,” I jested. We had been on a strict no-scent regimen. The goal was to give nothing away. How can you infiltrate an enemy encampment when they can physically smell you coming? Granted, most oligarchs were perfumed with all sorts of bath soaps, lotions, shampoos, conditioners, and aftershaves. But these were not the men and women we were concerned with. We were concerned with the guards, whomever we might run into: NORTHCOM jackboots, Chicago police, CJTF-CCC special operations forces, or mercenaries sitting on a cushy per diem. Most had their wits about them, so we couldn’t leave any stone unturned. Smelling the part was just proper preparation.  
Violet smiled. “You ready?”   
“For the operation or the briefing?”  
“He told you?” her chin gestured to the instructor.  
I nodded.   
“You ready?” she asked again. She was now looking around, surveying our cramped quarters. The space was about twelve meters long and two, maybe two and a half, meters wide. A lone light bulb hung from the ceiling by a thin brown wire.   
“Yup,” I replied, trying to force myself to be casual. This was no small task, and I knew I could rise to the occasion.   
Violet got everyone’s attention with a sharp whistle. It was time for my speech. I cleared my throat.   
“They don’t know who we are, but we’re in their lives. We’re all around them.”   
“Louder!” someone yelled from down the container.   
I spoke up.   
“They don’t know us. They see us as chaotic when in reality we’re anarchic. They see us as disorganized when in reality we’re decentralized. They see us as sloppy when in reality we’re inspired. So? So what? So we’re going to give them what they least expect: a coordinated attack.”  
The anarchists knew their target front and back. This group had been briefed dozens of times before; I didn’t need to add any new information. I improvised and used this time as an opportunity to rally the troops. Violet was nodding approvingly. I continued.   
“No need to stop by the intel office and scrub your person of identifying information or marks.” I said, making my voice a little gruffer for theatrical effect. “Hell, we don’t even have an intel office anymore.” I could hear the crowd rumble. The anarchists’ old intel chief was no longer with them. The crowd didn’t know where I was going with this, so I kept talking. “But there’s no reason to despair. We’ve got the advantage. Why? We’ve got nothing to lose. Why else? We’ve got the numbers.” Despite recent losses, anarchist and anti-oligarch forces outnumbered the Task Force by at least four to one.  
For a second, I considered telling them about Pope, the mole Violet had on the inside. I thought the crowd, these fighters, would have much more confidence if they knew they had an inside man. Then I reconsidered. We hadn’t heard from Pope since the bombing of the anarchist harbor. If Pope had been caught, then we’d have to adapt on the fly. No sense confusing the troops or burdening them with this dread.   
“We’ve got this. Stay strong. Power through. The point when we achieve relative superiority is also when we face the greatest risk. We must power through. We must sustain our superiority in order to be victorious. We have no choice. There’s a good chance they’ll call in reinforcements if we don’t disable their communications first. And, to be honest, they know our inherent weakness: our relative lack of firepower.”  
I felt like I was on a roll, the audience on my side. It was clear that my theatrical calando was leading somewhere, so they stayed with me, riveted. I had learned from Violet. I had learned from the best.  
“Our objective is NSA Strough. It sits on the grounds Fort Sheridan, north of the forest. Once we’ve reached our objective, we’re going to move fast. The longer the battle goes for, the more likely shit beyond our control will affect the outcome. And not in our favor. The enemy thinks we’re going to hit Hew’s Tomb today. We’ve made sure of that. So their resources are largely diverted. We’ve shaped the battlefield as best we could. But other factors remain. The oligarchy’s forces are tenacious and ruthless.” Our assault was to have multiple components: the cliff approach, the forest approach, a cyber attack, an attack on their power station, and a frontal assault, right up the gut. I expected a high loss of life.  
“There’s also chance and uncertainty. We eliminate chance and uncertainty by working fast and ending the battle as quickly as possible. We’ll be most vulnerable immediately prior to NSA Strough’s first line of defense. There, a portion of us will be more or less lined up. If all goes well, we’ll be in that position for only a minute. When you’re there, if you’ve got good concealment, stay loose, stay hydrated, and stay focused. You’ll be tired, but who cares?! You’ll be on the verge of the greatest victory since… well… ever!”   
I banged my fist against the wall. The corrugated metal shook. The crowd responded eagerly. Some faces read, ‘Who is this guy?’ Others read, ‘Hell yes!’  
I finished up. With a textbook rundown. “Our plan is simple and compartmentalized. We’ve rehearsed. We’re purposeful. We’re going to shock them. And fast. Speed is our best friend.” It was simple. I knew the anarchists had a focused objective, good intel, and the ability to innovate on the fly. They had taken preparations and had followed tight security procedures. They aimed to keep the enemy guessing. Their target, timing, and means of insertion were all under wraps. To the extent possible, they had rehearsed the attack. It hadn’t been full dress rehearsals against a life-sized mockup, but they had gotten the job done with limited space and surprisingly realistic models. They also had the element of surprise, a feat achieved through careful deception and pinpoint timing. They aimed to take advantage of the Task Force’s vulnerabilities; overreliance on state-of-the-art technology might eventually be its downfall.  
“Because we’re a small unit and not carrying a mechanized force on our backs, we cannot keep up a frontal firefight for long,” I stated.   
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Violet whispered. She placed her palm on the metal wall and rubbed it as if studying the skin of an alien spacecraft for the first time.   
I did my best to end my pep talk forcefully. “The day is ours. We’ve kept it simple. Our plans are secure. We’re mobile and fast. We’ve got a clear objective. And we’re going to surprise the hell out of these assholes!” My audience knew they couldn’t roar, lest they risk drawing attention to our vehicle, but the wave of energy they put forth told me I had succeeded in rallying the troops. I felt good. “The city is ours,” I concluded.  
The floor jolted as a crane lowered our shipping container, marked U.S. Transportation Command, to a dusty turnout on the edge of the forest, south of Fort Sheridan.


	20. Chapter 20

WITH THE DOORS OF the shipping container open, our squad dismounted and spread out into the forest. Violet led from the front and I carried up the rear. The cool forest air delighted me. It strengthened me. I knew that after today I’d be okay. I looked around. Teams of two and three from our unit were staggering lengthwise along the forest edge before pushing deeper.  
Violet and I crouched and waited. It was all part of the plan. We’d wait until the other teams gained sufficient breadth along the forest edge before we all pushed north towards NSA Strough. A rock pigeon cooed throatily. A hummingbird buzzed and chirped. A hawk cak-caked. We waited, as the birdcalls fortified us.   
Violet took off. I followed. We scrambled up a slope. Sizeable boulders and rocks, among which trees rifled to the sky, were treacherous. Slippery algae coated most of the rocks. I had to slow down. We reached the top of the slope, where Violet paused. Three trees dominated the earth ahead. I peered over the lip of terrain to get a better look at their strong trunks. Sycamore, bur oak, and…  
“What is that?” I asked, pointing to the third one.   
“Oak,” Violet replied.   
“No, the one to the right,” I clarified.   
“Black ash.” Its bark was a greyish brown. I estimated it to be about sixty feet tall, a two-foot trunk at chest height.  
“Ahhh.” I should have known.   
Like boney fingers, their mighty roots pushed out across the exposed rock as if to say ‘Hey, we see you.’ I looked to my right. Violet was scanning the horizon with a sharp black monocular. A robin whistled cheerfully somewhere in the treetops. I focused on the way ahead. My eyes looked through the dominant trees. The forest stretched forth.   
“This is a rainforest, you know,” Violet whispered, stashing the monocular somewhere in her vest.  
“Huh? A rainforest in Chicago?”  
She nodded, like a kid with a secret.   
We crawled forward, over the lip. We sneaked past the oak, the tallest of the two. It must have been over a hundred feet in height. The crown branched out in all directions. All of the branches were thick, strong. I admired it. I reached out and touched its bark. Brown with deep ridges, it was harsh and heartening. Violet set a strong pace. Discrete movements amid tenacious pacing. Her eyes were on the ground and her ears were oriented upwards. Tracking. She was tracking.  
“Someone’s been here?” I whispered.  
“Some thing,” she corrected.  
Prints adorned the mud.   
I felt relieved. But should I have? I looked at the tracks. I couldn’t distinguish much. Violet walked me through it. She pointed out the deep pads and the splayed toes, fresh and deep. There were no skids. The animal had proceeded surely, slowly. Just like us. Just like us, I hoped.  
We crawled forth.   
A small glade appeared before us. We had a choice: crawl straight ahead through the glade and save time or crawl around and get delayed a bit. I argued to forge straight ahead. Violet disagreed. We would be exposed, she argued. The enemy would have a clear tactical advantage if we got caught in the open. So we circumvented the glade. It would take us longer, but I wasn’t about to argue with Violet. Not now, anyway.  
We crawled forward. After a few moments, Violet stood up and began to walk hunched over. I followed her example. I had to keep an eye on my footing, but I stole glances up at the canopy whenever I got the chance. The moppy canopy, trees soaking up the cosmos, was a dream. Each tree struck me as different. Branch pattern, bark fingerprint, rings, foundation in soil, crown. All different. A few trees were stout, wider than they were tall. Most were tall, weathered, and proud. We roamed on in silence.   
Halfway around the glade Violet paused, this time to admire the ground. We had entered a particularly rocky spot. Lichens covered the rocks. She explained that the lichens broke down minerals and created an organic base, with moss soon establishing itself. We saw that before our eyes. Patches and battlefronts speckled the terrain. I wondered how many centuries it would take for a complete takeover.   
“Hey, at least it’s starting,” I mumbled optimistically.   
Many plants thrived on a mossy habitat.   
I appreciated her valuable information, but was now the best time for a lesson? I, we, had a schedule to keep. I asked her to please make it brief, but that didn’t help. She continued her talk like we were out for a Sunday stroll. I looked left, into the glade. A foggy blanket was taking hold. Violet wrapped up her spiel, so I got to my hands and knees, ready to depart.   
“Wait,” Violet whispered.   
‘What?’ I mouthed.   
“Northern Cardinal,” Violet said.   
I waited what seemed like several minutes, but I heard no sound. I took a step.   
Violet grabbed my neck like I was a puppy, retraining me firmly.   
I stood still for another several minutes. Then it came. Violet’s look alerted me. I turned to follow her eyes. The distinct red blur flew from tree to tree.   
“How did you…?”   
“I had a good grandfather. A man who appreciated nature more than anyone I’ve ever met,” Violet replied longingly.   
“I didn’t hear a thing. Did you?”  
She shook her head.   
“Then how did you know…?”  
Violet shrugged, smiled, and led the way. 

After more crawling, we reached the other side of the glade. I looked back to where we had started. The three trees from earlier—bur oak, sycamore, and black ash—cut dignified figures amid the forest.   
“They’re stately,” I whispered to myself.   
But Violet heard me. “Screw the state,” she joked.   
I couldn’t help but laugh, though my eyes stayed riveted on the trees.  
I revised my earlier claim. The oak was not the tallest of the three. The sycamore was. Its crown reached higher. It seemed to scrape the clouds with its irregular spread of branches, attaining at least twenty feet more height than the oak. I should have known. Its trunk had a much bigger diameter. But my thoughts had been elsewhere. My thoughts had been on my objective.  
Movement caught my eye. A lone horse picked up her head and surveyed me from the western side of the glade. She was chewing something slowly and methodically. I wondered where her family was. She stopped chewing. Her ears shot backwards, she snorted, and then she turned tail and ran. I strained my ears, but I once again couldn’t hear anything.   
“She was scared of you.”   
What does Violet know? I pivoted, adeptly steering the conversation in order to come across as letting her down gently. “There were no good old days when people actually lived in harmony with nature,” I explained.   
“Maybe so, but we can sure as hell try.” Her decisive rebuttal wrecked my plan. “Let’s go.”  
We crawled north, away from the glade.   
Rock by rock, bit by bit, Violet and I sneaked. Our assault teams centimetered north as dusk anchored all around us. Patience, ladled deeply, hinted at potential victory.  
The forest floor was much of the same: a rough terrain of slippery boulders interspersed with patches of leaves and pine needles, weaved through with powerful roots. We treaded slowly at first, getting a good feel for the terrain. After a kilometer or so, Violet stood up and proceeded at a low crouch. I followed her lead. I felt more exposed, but I trusted her instincts. We covered forest ground faster, catching no sight of other anarchist teams. Were we ahead of them? Behind? How far down had they spread out? Never mind.   
I focused my thoughts on the task at hand and observed Violet. She checked her compass regularly, keeping her pacing steady. She led well, pushing hard, but not so hard that I would be fatigued. She knew the fight was still ahead of us. She navigated the gym of nettles, scrub, evergreens, rocks, and sarsens like an acrobat. I did my best to keep up.  
The forest began to thin. At first I thought we were approaching another glade. Then I saw it. It was a blip at first, only showing itself through choppy rips in the canopy. I caught full sight of Naval Support Activity Strough as I slithered like a northern copperhead around the base of a tall pine. NSA Strough really was a fortress. A dense wall of black and grey stone pierced the ground and rose to the heavens. No entrance could be seen. Towers and turrets menaced any guest. Built on the bluffs northeast of Fort Sheridan cemetery, NSA Strough was viewed by most anarchist strategists as an impossible target. The construction firm had deliberately modeled the exterior after a castle that the chief architect had seen years ago during his stay near Deveselu, Romania.  
NSA Strough’s fortress was shaped like an isosceles triangle. The northeastern side ran along the cliffs overlooking Lake Michigan. Its walls, marketed as an impenetrable amalgam of stone, concrete, and proprietary epoxy, started rising at one hundred and eight meters above the shore. Part of the northwestern side overlooked the distant Sheridan Road. Between the road and the fortress’ western side ran a wasteland of pillboxes and guard shacks, carved out of the old housing community that once stood there. Offices, ammunition depots, armories, and barracks sprawled inside the fortress. A well-manicured grass field, on which mercenaries regularly scrimmaged uniformed military personnel, ran east and west in the middle of the compound. The mercenaries took pride in their current win streak. Upon the fortress’ ramparts ran a series of cupolas and casemates. All armaments, of course, were linked electronically, their movements controlled from a central command room.  
The whole fortress must have been designed with perimeter defense in mind. The most abundant weapon on the ramparts, according to my eye, was the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station, CROWS. Three of them perched on the southern ledge, facing us like a murder of bludgeons waiting to bash. CROWS was a remote control system that strapped onto light weapons, the .50-caliber machine gun in this case. Like most of the Task Force’s toys, CROWS was developed for use overseas in the myriad of elective military adventures that defined the early twenty-first century. Home to roost, CROWS now provided NSA Strough personnel with the ability to track and engage approaching enemies while sitting comfortable inside the fortress.   
“Stay back,” I told Violet.   
She paused.   
“CROWS,” I relayed.   
“Hmm,” she said. “We’re beyond its range right now,” Violet reported, referring to CROWS’ laser rangefinders and thermal cameras.  
I agreed. The latest CROWS model could only identify targets up to two kilometers away. We crouched a hair beyond that distance.  
“There he is,” Violet said slowly.  
“Who?” I asked.  
“You know who.”  
Hauser sat in the tallest tower of NSA Strough. I could see him through my scope as he paced behind quad-pane bulletproof glass. He wore the same clothes I had seen him in last: a plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned several notches and dark dungarees. Black boots, too, no doubt. He rolled up his sleeves as he paced, exposing massive forearms.   
“How are you feeling?” Violet asked.   
“You know… in another life, a long long time ago, I was standing outside a door. I knew I had to go in, but my feet were lead. The clock was ticking. I had to move. That feeling though. That feeling that you know the next few seconds are make or break, the iron pendulum in your chest, it’s just…”  
Violet placed her palm on my shoulder.   
I refocused.   
Hauser stepped towards the bulletproof glass. He reached out. His arm disappeared to the right, behind the massive wall. Slowly his face came into clearer focus. He had opened the bulletproof glass. A clear shot was mine for the taking. He stepped forward to greet the open-air slit on the fortress’ southern wall. A cold spring air walloped him, momentarily freezing his sizable chin in mid-thought. Before him, evergreen tops pricked like caltrops against the dark sky. Some waved, as if a stampede of bulls were raging beneath their crystal canopies. The forest was tough terrain. It boasted gnarled jack pine, stout hemlock, and muscular red cedar, chaotic rows as thick as they were old. And the grassland separating the fortress from the forest was bedecked with landmines, concertina wire, and Czech hedgehogs.  
I blinked back to Violet’s message: Maybe there wasn’t a time when people lived in true harmony with nature, but we can sure as hell try. I was looking through my scope but I couldn’t focus on the important details. Wind, temperature, distance, heartbeat—all disrupted. Hauser looked like he was laughing as he nodded towards the heavy guns on the reinforced terrace below him. He stepped back and the quad-pane window closed rapidly. My shot was gone, untaken.   
I hung my head, picked it up, stowed my weapon, and then scrambled forward.   
“We wait here,” Violet instructed.   
“But we’re still twenty meters from the grass,” I replied.   
“We wait.”  
“When do we charge?”  
“Wait for the cue.”  
“What’s the cue?”  
“You’ll know when you see it.”   
“How can you be so confident?”   
“We’ve come too far to fail. Trust me.”  
“Trust is key,” I affirmed.  
“It is. It’s one of the foundations of the new society we’re building.”  
“Yes trust, no hierarchy,” I said, reaching the conclusion as my mouth uttered the words. “Now we observe.”  
We waited in silence until Violet said, “You know what I hate?”   
“Not much.”   
“No, that’s a lie. Among officialdom I hate how bureaucrats and political appointees add Community to the word Intelligence, so now people think it’s a monolith that agrees on everything.”  
“They don’t realize the dissent that exists inside the god damn sixteen intel agencies.”  
“Especially on issues like this.”  
“Issues like this?”  
“Politically sustainable warfare.”  
“From D.C.’s position?”  
“For them. For now. You know, in the early two-thousands, the days of D.C.’s last big gorging, they had more military personnel in one carrier strike group than diplomats in the entire Foreign Service?”  
“Carrier strike group or carrier battle group?”  
“What’s the difference?”  
“Beats me. I think there’s a difference though. Maybe they’re the same. I dunno. I’m no good with most Navy stuff.”  
“Maybe it was just a bureaucratic name change,” Violet suggested. “Some admiral putting it on his promotion sheet in order to get to four stars.”  
“Damn Navy.”  
We laughed quietly.   
“You know the system well.”  
“Is that true, about the number of diplomats?” I asked.  
“I think so. But that was many years ago. The whole form of Empire has changed now, focused inward.” Violet looked thoughtful. I let her ponder. “I wish I could bottle the feeling of being on the verge of remembering something, because it happens to me all the time.”  
“Damn flies,” I said, blowing an insect away from my face. “Charge now?”  
“Negative. That wasn’t the cue.”


	21. Chapter 21

“CHARGE NOW?” I PERSISTED, adopting a joking tone.   
“Negative. I’ve got a little job for you.”   
“Not more listening,” I complained.  
She nodded.   
“Ugh. Fine.” I retrieved my listening equipment from my knapsack.  
“Let me know when anything changes.”  
“Anything changes?”   
She ignored me. Her monocular was already up against her eye.   
We sat there in the cool, damp edge of the forest floor. The canopy curled thick above our heads. A lone spot of fluffy grey poked through the canopy.   
I donned the headset and listened to the contractors above.

“Are you an introvert?”  
“I don’t know. I often wonder.”  
“I’m not.”  
“I know.”  
I adjusted my right leg as I listened to the friends laugh together. To my ears, their laughter lasted a little longer than natural, leaving me curious.  
Markarian piped up. “I think you are. An introvert, that is. I think introverts question, listen, and persist. All things you do well.”  
“I dunno.” Tyng sighed. “I’m kinda aroused right now, like at the end of A Hard Nut To Crack, with that Gennaro cleavage.”  
“You’re one random asshole, you know that?”  
The constant rollercoaster of their register kept me engaged.  
“Didn’t your family used to watch the sequel as an annual Christmas tradition?” Markarian asked.   
“Until Silver Linings took over,” Tyng rued.  
“At least the government was the bad guy in the sequel. The government was just incompetent in the first one.”   
“Were they the bad guy? Some might say they were just rogue soldiers under the command of a prick named Stuart.”  
“A badass prick,” Markarian amended. “You’re right, though. The Pentagon’s Hollywood liaison offices would never allow the military to be portrayed as the bad guy in popular cinema.”  
I couldn’t help but nod.   
“Gnarly… I mean, what do you do when you realize your government is the real asshole on our small blue dot?” Markarian’s voice sounded deeper. Where was he going with this?  
Tyng entertained him, hesitating at first. “I imagine it feels like… It’s like finding a locked room in your childhood home. Filled with weird stuff. Don’t even want to deal with it.”  
“No,” Markarian disagreed. “It feels like, like when you stand up too quickly. It’s not dizziness. And it’s not feeling faint. It’s just whoa, you gotta pause. In that pause you can accept the facts, press on and act accordingly, or you can sit your ass back down, return to comfort and believe the lore.”  
“It feels like when you think some woman is really hot, but then she whips out a cig and lights up.”  
“I always appreciated your no-cig policy.” Markarian lauded. “Maybe not your best example, though.”  
“True.”  
“Most people don’t even enter the pause. Better to believe the fairytale than face tough facts,” Markarian continued. “It feels like… Like the taste you get when you go to bed without brushing your teeth. Except all over your body.”   
“Still going with this?” Tyng changed the subject. “Trisha Campbell in House Party was hotter than Holly Gennaro, by the way.”  
“Mmm. The real Fort Campbell.” Markarian said with a laugh. “Nothing compares to eighties and nineties movies.”  
“True…”   
“I mean, why is it so hard to accept?” Markarian wondered rhetorically. “That some rich douchebags don’t care about you. They pursue the process as dictated by dominant economic and lobbying interests, and that’s that.” Why was he still harping on this? He was on a government mission, for god’s sake.  
“I hope Captain Patterson comes back on this net and rips you a new one for talking like that,” Tyng said with a laugh.   
Markarian didn’t laugh.  
Tyng cleared his voice. “Okay, so the super-wealthy and their policymakers impose their military and economic power upon others? In the hopes of what?”  
“Expropriation,” Markarian affirmed. “Robbery, by another name. Takin’ resources, capital, land, labor. Whatever.”  
“Done how?” Tyng asked. He now sounded short, angry.   
“Whatever way that allows investors to get richer,” Markarian said. “It’s always been that way. The oligarchy is no different. Just a different form of ruling class.”  
Tyng paused. The hot mic bore a soft, steady blast in my headset. “Is there no merit, though, to the wild way some men carry out their objectives across planet Earth? To snag resources of other lands?”  
“Is that a Jimmy Buffett lyric?” Markarian laughed. “Merit, perhaps. Honor or glory? No way.”  
“But there’s no room for those two in this business,” Tyng stated.  
“Exactly!” Markarian yipped. “This business. And what are you talking about? Langley feigns righteousness all over the place. Stars, memoirs, and a litany of political horseshit.”  
“I guess that’s where we agree to disagree,” Tyng said, his voice somewhere between sadness and apathy. “In all our talks in all our skies, I find room to admire the men of history who venture out there with profiteers and militaries. And you. Well, you strive for… ideals?”  
“A country can’t be a republic and an empire at the same time. Either way, let’s say that someone who changes history—a good hero or a good bad guy—is one part character, one part situation.” Markarian asked.  
“Agreed.” Tyng’s voice was now fully detached. “Good compromise.”  
“Many people might have the potential to be heroes, but they gotta be tested,” Markarian qualified.   
“They gotta be tested and rise to the occasion when the going gets tough,” Tyng conceded.   
“Ready for our first pass?” Markarian asked, typing quickly.  
The distinct squeak of a rotating chair graveled into my headphones.   
“Roger,” Tyng confirmed.  
“… leaving a sky unsullied by human affairs,” Markarian muttered.   
“Huh? Sit down, it’s game time.” 

“I think there’s something wrong,” I told Violet. I rechecked my device. It was functioning fine.  
“Something wrong?” She looked up. The plane carrying Markarian and Tyng was barely a silver fleck in the skies above.  
“How’s your volume?” Violet asked, but it was more of an order to check my settings one more time.  
I complied. Then it reached me. A scream, a human scream, ripped through the headset into my ears.  
“Something is wrong,” I concurred.   
“He’s early,” Violet stated.   
“Early?”   
She was checking her watch.  
“Yup. Five minutes early.”   
“Who?” I asked. I waited for several pounding breaths, but she didn’t answer. “What’re you talking about?”  
Violet held up her hand. She had plugged my loose earbud into her left ear. She concentrated on listening while her eyes scanned our surroundings. After a seemingly interminable silence, she popped out her earpiece and explained, “We’ve got a man aboard that aircraft.”  
“Jesus,” I proclaimed.  
“Right now, he has disabled the aircrew. He should be commandeering the craft soon.”  
“Disabled?” I asked.  
White noise came through the earbud, then the line went dead.  
Violet laid down completely flat against the ground.  
What was happening ten kilometers in the air?  
As I waited and wondered, I glanced down at the surf. From my position, I could see through the shrubs, down into a ravine, and along the shoreline. A stick figure, like a frail ant, emerged from the surf only to be covered again by the relentless waves. Never getting dragged backward, the figure half-swam half-trudged forward toward the rock cover. I kept an eye on him or her. Whose team were they on? A lone coyote? A mercenary? Others were also approaching from the sea, looking up at the cliffs, a boundary imposing itself upon their senses. I wiggled to my right to get a better look. Down below, blue shards of rock smiled amid frothing waters. I went back to my safe space: nature. Throughout my days, nature had always been there for me, comforting me whenever the weight of my job or the burden of inevitable betrayal reared its ugly head.  
The strata visible in different types of rocks marveled me. Thoughts about rocks got me thinking about geological time. Boulders were deposited here thousands of years ago. Clays, fluorspar, limestone, sand, shale, silica, and zinc were all present, all available within the Cook County area. You just needed to know where to look. Some I could see, but most I couldn’t. I thought about Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the Upper Peninsula. I had visited there when I was just a youngster, back when the oligarchy was all but announced; back when most people were too busy yelling across artificial party lines to notice. I thought of the UP’s sandstone cliffs. Their colors had astounded me. I remember being unable to speak in the face of their immensity and vibrant striations. Colors and angles speaking louder than any scientist.   
Current and future grief flooded my senses. Why did I choose this path? Then came the inevitable existential questions. The universe was expanding. A dark energy accelerated this expansion. The galaxy, an anarchist. A dark matter ideology helped the anarchist keep up its fast rotation, no matter how far she spread her bands from the center of the galaxy. Should I have been encouraged or disheartened by these facts? We were nothing in the grand scheme.  
We were evolved, yes. And with this evolution came our bellicose nature and warrior tendencies. Would we evolve past this? Should we? Could we? In many ways, especially their anti-war nature, Bonobo were more evolved than we were. If they were the planet’s best hope for peace, it would be utterly ironic that human’s pollution and destruction of habitat sent the Bonobo into extinction. Our collective learning, collective destruction, given the havoc we wreaked upon the natural world, squashed even our last hopes. Some might say humanity, if I could call it that, needed to continue to harvest energy in order to avoid a descent into chaos. But now we already descended into a sort of chaos, a chaos of humanity’s own creation. Now that we were in chaos, why didn’t we give the whole energy-harvesting imperative a second glance? Why didn’t we give ourselves a bit of a breather? Why didn’t we look for ways to safeguard our collective knowledge without destroying the natural world? That is, once we were safely out of from under the oligarchy’s thumb. Those who survived might serve themselves well to focus on the basics: providing clean water and steady, renewable energy to all communities. Period.  
If we really were so insignificant, then what was I fighting for? Was it too late to pull out? Maybe the mighty galaxies—anarchist and oligarch—could collide and have no stars hit? That was possible. No. The oligarchy and the anarchists were more like two gas clouds hurtling towards one another at incredible rates. The collision would be immense. Maybe there was hope. Maybe it was not all doom and gloom. If astronomy’s honesty could keep us humble and in check, then would the oligarchs listen to its reason? Unlikely. Would anarchists even exist without oppressive forces, like today’s oligarchy? It was days like today when I felt like the oligarchy was a black hole, due to its very nature sucking all towards it. The black hole, an energy source. The anarchists were the matter falling into the black hole, producing radiant light together just before passing the event horizon.  
Enchanted minds, observing times. Violet coughed, bringing me back to the present. My eyes were burning right through the distant strata of rock. Some of this rock was formed hundreds of millions of years ago, no? Long before our petty borders. Deep time soothed me, calmed me. Nothing mattered. It was okay. What I was about to do was okay. In a thousand years, none of my actions would matter. Let alone tens of millions of years. By then rising waters will have naturally carved up much of North and South America. Good stuff. Go get ‘em.  
I thought about Markarian and Tyng. I pictured the scene: Faceless contractors and airmen lying motionless, slumped against their monitors. Poisoned perhaps. Maybe strangled. Maybe both. The anarchist’s combatant returning to finish him off, keeping nausea under control. How polar, the longing for familiar flesh, even if deceased, and the pure repugnance of alien skin. One contractor folded up, accepting his fate.   
I looked up. The aircraft, the myopic artistry of the war machine. It was losing altitude. Fast.


	22. Chapter 22

VIOLET GRIPPED MY SHOULDER. A slight motion with her head told me it was time to advance. I wrapped my earpieces around my listening device and stored it all in my knapsack. I started to crawl. It felt good to crawl again. My limbs soon warmed up and I got into a good rhythm. I imagined this was what a swimmer felt like during a great practice.  
A distant crash tinned my ears. The RC-290. So the anarchists had someone on the plane. The man had sacrificed himself, doing his part to contribute to victory? I couldn’t believe it.  
Violet didn’t break stride. Left, right, left, right. Her crawling was eerie, almost arachnid-esque. She stopped suddenly. We had reached the minefield. It looked like any other field, aside from a few gaping craters and several rows of Czech hedgehogs. An animal—what looked like a swollen carcass—rested one meter back from the tree line. The carcass was moving. Breathing. It was alive. It looked like a bloated mouse from where I rested.  
“Don’t touch it,” I cautioned.   
Violet gave me a look of disapproval and reached out to pet the wild animal. The furry guy popped up, backed up, and began twitching its nose rapidly. He pivoted and studied Violet’s hand with intense scrutiny. Violet extended a finger over its head and brought it down to stroke the critter’s back. The critter’s face immediately broke into a pleasurable grin.   
“Harmless,” Violet assured. “And cute.” She repeated the motion, stroking the critter into submission. “You can touch it if you want.”   
“I’m good,” I told her. It was as if she was stalling. We were in the middle of launching a major attack and all she cared about was petting the creatures of the forest? We had already delayed long enough listening to the contractors chitchat on the RC-290 aircraft. “Can we get going?!”  
“Don’t worry,” Violet soothed. “It’s all just one big racket.” She blew me a playful kiss, put her head in the mud, and crawled forward into the minefield.   
I shouted, “Are you nuts?!” I had thought we’d take the time to circumnavigate the field or at least try to disarm the mines.   
I was no hero. I wasn’t about to run into a minefield and drag anyone to safety. I covered my head and shrunk back behind the nearest berm. My wince relaxed into a steady blink, which eased into a curious squint. I heard no explosion. Slowly, I picked up my head. Violet was only a few meters in front of me. I decided to follow in her path, a lane clear of danger. It was amazing to watch Violet’s senses cranked all the way up. Her body, a bunch of hound dog whiskers, evaluated minute changes on the fly. Her fingers lightly probed the ground, carefully searching for detonators, motion sensors, pressure pads, and wires. Her eyes scoured the dirt, the scrub. Her ears listened for anything out of the ordinary—from the click of a safety from man unseen to the flick of a piece of twine. Her nose appraised muck, smokeless explosive powders, flora, and animal feces. Her mouth hung slightly open, her tongue giving her nose an extra boost. The only sound I heard was the slop of Violet’s gradual advance. The minefield was soon behind us, no explosives encountered.   
“What’s your buddy Sun Tzu say?” Violet asked as I caught up to her. Drenched with sweat, she looked like a chipmunk that had been caught in a swimming pool filter. Her eyes were bloodshot—lightning bolts of red, the color of lava—and her posture slunk.  
“Are you serious right now?” I fumed.  
A look of calm had taken over her face. How could she take this so casually?  
“Stay down,” she ordered, almost as an afterthought.  
I put my face in the mud beside her.  
“The cost of raising an army… will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day,” she paraphrased.  
“What’s that got to do with a damn minefield?”  
“Allow me to finish.” She slogged ahead with a relentless low crawl. “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”  
I saw her point.   
“Which one are we?” she asked.  
“You’re the first group.” I coughed on a slurp of watery mud. “You’ve prepared well. You’ve won in many respects before even stepping foot onto the battlefield.”  
She paused in the mud.  
“You know, you often talk like you’re not one of us. You should start considering yourself a part of our community. Say ‘we’ next time, not ‘you.’”  
“Still… What gives? What’s the deal?”  
“If you crawl with me, I’ll explain,” Violet said softly.   
I showed my agreement by putting my head in the mud and slogging along with her.   
She explained. RACKET was supposed to display all of the forces (friendly armored vehicles, dismounted infantry, drones, piloted aircraft, plainclothes mercenaries, etc.) available to the oligarchy in a given area. RACKET was billed as ‘seizing full tactical advantage within a coastal city,’ but the visual results it produced on a tablet were less than stellar. Anarchists played a large part in this. First, the anarchists had focused all of their efforts on pinpointing the frequencies on which the tablets received their data, and then swiping the data. With the information safely copied onto anarchist-controlled servers, the anarchists could then focus on decrypting the data. After decryption, the anarchists could, at will, read the information flowing to and from the Task Force officers’ tablets. This gave the anarchists two great advantages: seeing how the Task Force viewed the battlefield and seeing an up-to-date oligarchy order of battle.  
“What about their geospatial tools?” I complained. I was fully freaking out at this point. “They’re off the charts!”  
Violet replied with a grunt. It sounded like ‘patience,’ but I couldn’t tell through the sound of our advance up a mucky knoll.  
“What?! You warned me about SNATCH like it was the devil’s all-seeing eye!” SNATCH, Studies in Nationwide Analytics of Terrain Cloud Handiwork, gave oligarch forces the latest images of any terrain on earth. It used everything available—military satellite data, commercial satellite data, open-source. Everything.  
Violet sighed, rolled onto her back, and took out her monocular.  
“Take a look,” she said, staying on her back.  
I took the monocular, crawled another meter to the top of the knoll, and trained my sights on Hauser’s aerie. The man was in the middle of a wind-up. Then he threw it. His tablet smashed against an unseen wall.   
“He’s having trouble?” she asked.  
I didn’t know what to say. “He seems… frustrated.”  
“Like you said, we’ve prepared well.”  
“How did you…?” I gaped. I returned the monocular to Violet’s hands.   
“Victorious warriors win first…”  
“And defeated warriors wage war first and then try to win,” I paraphrased, completing her sentence.   
.50 caliber fire cut up the mud around us.   
“CROWS!” Violet yelled.   
The bullets seemed to come from all directions.   
I pressed my face fully into the mud as I scooted back down the knoll. The ground was thumping. My body felt like it was resting on a construction site where the crew had accidentally hit a water main yet refused to stop drilling. I slopped my head to the right and eased open a muddy eye. Violet was about a meter below me, and almost completely submerged in mud. I placed my hand on Violet’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” I assured. I knew she couldn’t hear me.  
She looked at me, curious, neither calm nor frightened.   
There, in the middle of the din, a golden butterfly came to rest on the back of her shoulder. It stretched its wings and just soaked in the day. Perhaps it was completely oblivious to the insanity around it, or maybe it just ignored silly humans. Either way, it was a marvel. The butterfly reminded me of my old Yellow Labrador. When I was very young, my family’s dog would sit out on the back porch and soak up the sun. He would sprawl out, close his eyes, and breath deeply. This butterfly seemed to be doing the same.   
CRRRRR! A powerful bomb blast three hundred meters northwest of our position kicked up a cloud of concrete and dirt. The knoll took the brunt of the shockwave.   
“Stay down,” Violet reminded me.   
“Sonofabitch.” My dismay was evident.   
Violet stared straight ahead in anger until the dust and smoke cleared. A puff rose slowly in the distance.  
“GBU-91?”  
“You’ve been studying,” Violet said, nodding a muddy assent.  
“How much does one of those cost?”  
“The bomb? No clue. Rexthrop makes a killing though.”  
Dirt, metal, concrete, and tree limbs were still drizzling to the northwest.   
“You know they’re hosting high school science fairs these days? Corporate war profiteers getting in early.”  
“Classic power move. They’ve been doing that for decades now though. Normalize corporate practice, influence minds, laughing all the way to the bank.”  
“High school is fertile ground for militarism. “  
“Yet another practice that started before the oligarchy became entrenched. It’s our fault, the people’s fault, that it got this way.”  
Violet wiggled sideways and placed an affectionate hand on my back.  
Amid the pandemonium, I wondered about the other assault teams. I pictured the instructor putting us to shame with his stealth and wisdom, scrambling to the east of us, moving with the agility of a college athlete—not a word, each movement leading to firm handholds, crouch to leap to crouch, equally at home among lush flora and deep rock.  
“What do you think?” Violet asked.   
“What do I think?”   
She smiled, that same smile from before—many secrets, no tell.   
Then I realized: the CROWS fire had ceased.   
“What happened?” I asked. My voice felt hoarse, as if I had been yelling the whole time. “It’s really quiet,” I noted, stupidly.   
“What’s that?” Violet asked, her voice now a whisper.   
“It’s really really quiet,” I whispered, a little louder.  
She winked at me.  
“This isn’t a game,” I scolded.   
Her eyes twinkled. She explained our current advantage: The oligarchs had bought the anarchists’ fake intel regarding trying to retake Hew’s Tomb, hence far less defensive assets were present at NSA Strough. The anarchists’ deception was delaying the enemy’s action. And we owed the silence, the crippled CROWS, to a mole on the inside. How many moles? I wondered.   
Violet stated, “That’s our cue.”  
We charged.   
Silently. Not like the charges you see in the movies.   
Our attack struck me as melodic—many voices building upon a shared theme. Multiple lines of anarchist attack flowed independently, but together formed harmony. It was very difficult for Task Force assets to listen to, let alone follow, the anarchists’ melodic lines and at the same time track the overall harmonic structure. The anarchists’ melodic lines often appeared unrelated, though they were just in different keys. One line did not stop attacking when another line entered the battle. True to anarchist form, there was no set order in which lines needed to enter the battle. Anarchists entered whenever they deemed it appropriate based on the conditions around them, their overall sense of timing, and their appraisal of the fugue itself. Each small unit brought variety to the fight, all while staying within the anarchic, harmonic relationship.   
The meat of the attack involved anarchists using the main melody in creative ways. I knew very little about the overall scope of anarchist preparations, but what I did know astounded me. The anarchists used information available on social media pages to social-engineer their way into the admin’s email inbox. By getting Task Force personnel to click on a spoofed email, for example, malware downloaded onto the target’s computer and stole passwords. Once inside the network, anarchist hackers installed backdoors so they could continue wreaking havoc even if discovered. Other advantages leveraged ahead of the attack were zero-day exploits, undiscovered security holes that the Task Force had not yet patched (because the National Security Agency was still using the exploits to mess with groups who resisted D.C., at home and abroad). Overall, the anarchists’ cyber attacks, designed to confuse and conceal, thickened the fog of war.  
I pictured it through Task Force eyes: dead of spring, electricity went out across the fortress; logisticians and on-site tech specialists struggled to pinpoint the problem, generators strained, emergency frequencies seemed jammed, tripping up the dispatch of medics, corpsmen, and field service reps. Anarchists had weaponized the mundane. Hacked Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles stalled and overheated. The incessant, profitable corporate drive to make the U.S. Armed Forces ‘smarter’ and more interconnected had done nothing but increase the Task Force’s vulnerability.   
Multiple, coordinated attacks disabled NSA Strough, stripped the fortress of its grandeur, forcing it bare against the anarchist wind.  
As I scrambled through the gaping hole in the outside wall (courtesy of a BGM-71 TOW missile pilfered from warehouse on the border of Saguaro National Park, and shipped north by an enterprising Tucson faction), I felt respect for anarchism. It really was a powerful force. Its pieces were independent yet complementary, dispersed yet formidable. Hmmm. The fortress seemed suddenly frail, like an old hockey player who realizes, mid-shift, that he really can’t hang with the younger athletes.  
Slovenly chaos lay before me. Mercenaries were sprawled dead around the parade ground and athletic field. Some Task Force militants tried to rally their peers, but they were completely incompetent in the face of anarchist preparation; dedicated emergency communications frequencies had been disrupted and disabled. Meanwhile, anarchist voices passed ideas playfully back and forth. Smoke choked the bedlam.  
Anarchist forces engaged the Task Force militants inside the perimeter of NSA Strough. All anarchists were on deck: those approaching up the cliffs, those storming the southern wall, those coming up from underground, and those who had been working on the inside. A synergy like no other, a synergy only producible under anarchism.   
I followed Violet through the smoky haze. I thought I caught glimpse of a moon struggling for show time as the sun set, but my eyes might have been deceiving me. I extended both of my hands. One felt for the wall to my right. It kept me steady. One squeezed my M1911 pistol. It too kept me steady. I trained my eyes on Violet’s silhouette. She moved like a leopard. I felt like we were back at the beginning: she rescuing me, if you could call it that, from a pretty decent beating in the park. Violet was just as lethal today. Every dozen paces she paused and squeezed the trigger. Through the smoke I couldn’t see her target, but her conviction told me she saw all. The stinging taste of tear gas mingled with the caustic bitters of gunpowder. Then I heard it. It sounded fake, like the stock sound of a door opening used in video games and movies alike. Violet’s led me inside.   
The door shut behind us. We were in a cold stairwell. The emergency lighting flickered. A narrow black staircase spiraled to the heavens.   
“This place really is a fortress.”  
Violet winked at me and unraveled the cloth covering her nose and mouth. From her cargo pocket she withdrew a fresh facecloth. She dabbed it with a clear liquid from a small vial and handed me the cloth. I wiped my eyes and nose with it. The liquid cooled my skin, like strong toothpaste on my tongue in the morning.   
I leaned back against the wall. The smooth stones energized my spine. Violet checked her carbine and tapped me on the shoulder. It was time to ascend. Within the first ten strides, our bodies got used to the spacing of the steps and the steady curvature of the staircase. From then on it was much easier to maintain an upward vision as we ascended.   
We crossed the first door. Muffled voices pounded from within.   
“Control room,” Violet whispered.   
We entered the control room with the swipe of a badge furnished by one of the anarchists’ moles. The door slid open with a kind whoosh. Two pudgy contractors sat in front of a dozen monitors. Their backs, resting comfortably in stately black swivel chairs, faced us. Each contractor wore a bulky headset.   
“We’re experiencing a network issue that has caused disruption to some of our systems,” the guard on the left reported into a thin microphone. “I… I understand, sir… All but two CROWS, northwest side…”  
I stepped towards the contractor on the left.   
Violet crept towards the one on the right.   
The contractor on the right twitched his legs rapidly as he spoke. “Our technical teams took immediate action to identify the cause of the issue, sir, and we’re working to restore services as quickly as possible.”   
The contractor on the left replied to a voice on the other end, “That action is ongoing with services gradually being restored.”   
Blunt trauma to the head incapacitated both guards. We bound and gagged them before their swivel chairs stopped rotating.   
I scanned the monitors in the control room. I soon found what I was looking for. I stared at her face. I had seen her before. How long had it been? A week ago? Two? She was the elderly lady who had run the dishwashing station back in the anarchist harbor. What was her name?   
“Lana,” Violet whispered. “They never see her coming.”  
The Chief of the National Guard Bureau—the same man who had once declared anarchism a ‘clear and present danger to the homeland’—slouched on stage in the NSA Strough auditorium. Climate-controlled serenity cushioned eight-ounce plastic water bottles on the tables between the chairs on stage.  
“Why’s he frozen there?” I asked.  
“He’s got nowhere to go.” Violet explained. As recent as an hour ago, all eyes had been on him while personalities from think tanks and corporate media lobbed softball questions his way. Private mercenaries had guarded all entrances. All parties had thought they were safe.   
The elderly woman spoke up. Violet motioned for me to don one of the headsets. The elderly woman’s words came through clearly after Violet flicked a few switches: “For all your talk about strategy and tactics, you made a grievous error. Too many of you gathered in one place.” Resolute, the elderly woman adjusted her heavy socks in the back row of the now-abandoned seating.   
The anarchists knew it was essential to get academia to stop accepting money from the Pentagon and the so-called U.S. Intelligence Community. Many academics had actually convinced themselves that their work was somehow distinct from or a step removed from military activity. Academics who developed rocketry for intercontinental ballistic missiles, for example, claimed it wasn’t them who would order a missile launch. After all, trained professionals were in charge at the Pentagon and all U.S. military installations. The academics could rest easy at night. Other academics comforted themselves by basking in patriotic platitudes. After all, they were helping bolster ‘national security.’ Some academics slept soundly by claiming they were merely working to advance science or the humanities, and that the government used their work as it saw fit. These means, of coping with and isolating themselves from the destruction caused by the U.S. war industry, were very effective. Whatever their method, with great success, all sorts of scientists and engineers had mentally insulated themselves from effects of their work in martial domains.  
The stage lighting highlighted perspiration gleaming on the brow of the Chief of the National Guard Bureau. He was the only non-anarchist remaining in the auditorium. The rest of the day’s presenters, hosts, and media had long since departed.  
“Now what are we going to do with you?” the elderly woman asked. She made clear that she had provided a choice to the academics that had been in attendance today: agree to work for peaceful purposes for the rest of their lives or leave the premises and test fate. Her action would not solve the structural corruption in academia, but it would help, maybe even getting the snowball rolling. The records—files on each of them, including great detail about their work, family, and friends, not to mention extensive files illuminating how their work for the Pentagon ultimately culminated in civilian deaths at home and abroad—in the elderly woman’s possession had been enough to convince a few of the academics to abandon any labor pertaining to the Task Force or the war industry in general. A few others, including a young post-doc working at the most vogue think tank, had opted to walk away and test fate. Today’s dose of reality was a mere nudge back on track, but sufficient enough to at least break a few free of the oligarchy’s grasp. Where they went from here was a matter of fortune and scruples.  
The Chief of the National Guard Bureau sat on stage with a vacant look on his face. Perhaps he craved music, family, or his warm study as he weighed his options. In him I saw a man whose military career had kept him from his patient wife for too long. I read acceptance on the Chief’s face: complying with the war industry’s racket wasn’t worth it anymore. It never had been.   
An explosion shook the walls, the echo benefiting from the auditorium’s outstanding acoustics. The Chief looked around him as if admiring the wallpaper in a new home. He then turned to the elderly woman. She stood up, nodded at the Chief, and glided down the aisle, her legs silky in the dim light. With ghostly weight, she departed through the emergency exit. Even the emergency exit sign was dead.   
The door closed quietly, ringing like a lone piano key, stage front. The Chief of the National Guard Bureau sat forward, placed his face in his hands, and wept.  
“Come on,” Violet said.   
“Show’s over,” I agreed.   
We breezed on, up the spiral staircase. Violet kept her gaze toward the unraveling steps above. The bulbs that illuminated our way were flickering, and they were few and far between. We ascended smoothly through these waves of darkness and light, our footsteps falling gently. I placed each step with the care of a librarian re-shelving her favorite novel, but I may have made a little more noise than that.  
A lone gunshot cracked. It rang into the stairwell, its echo overstaying its welcome.   
“Five point five six,” Violet mouthed, having paused mid-step.  
I pursed my lips.  
We walked slower, undeterred.  
After five flights, the stairway broadened. The doors leading off of it were statelier, made of richer wood and larger frames than the doors below. We were nearing the top. I felt the stairs’ coil push gradually away from the southwest corner of the fortress. It was a peculiar effect. Violet stopped abruptly, her eyes riveted upward. She now crouched in the dimmest part of the stairwell. I was several steps behind her, somewhat illuminated by the rays of light ascending persistently from the nearest bulb. I muttered my discontent, disobeyed the orders from Violet’s hand gestures, and sidled up to her. I could now see what she had been looking at. Sparse furnishings lined a hallway. We crawled up the final steps together. We went slowly. Very slowly. Peering over the top step, we took in the whole scene. Emergency lighting illuminated an ornate wooden door. It had gold vertical handles and stood ten paces down the hallway.  
“There,” I said, trusting my gut. I pointed to the doors.  
A shape materialized farther down the hallway. I trained my weapon on the figure, center mass.  
“Wait,” Violet whispered.   
A man materialized from the shape. I kept my sights on him. His lengthy strides propelled him down the hallway in an eerie silence. I knew him. I had seen him before. But where?  
“Don’t shoot,” Violet ordered. “It’s the bartender.”   
“Damn,” I said, keeping my weapon pointed at him.   
“I knew he was a good soul,” she whispered, her jaw barely moving a muscle.  
He joined our duo fluidly, moving from long strides to crouching to leaning against the staircase alongside us. He smelled like the Lake. An M4 carbine clung comfortably to his back like a remora.  
“The power intake is severed,” he reported. He then informed us that he was operating with another anarchist unit, one that came in over the sea berm.   
I thought about the night Violet and I had spent in the man’s bar in order to lure in Pope. Had the bartender known Violet was an anarchist then?   
“Roger,” Violet replied.  
“Generous tipper, you are,” he remarked, patting Violet on the back.  
She laughed silently. “What can I say? You have a soothing presence.”  
He ran his palm over his clean-shaven neck.   
The emergency lighting died.   
We waited like patient critters in a jungle canopy. Our eyes soon adjusted to the darkness. Our trio sprinted to the ornate doors halfway down the hallway.   
“Remember,” Violet cautioned. “Just like we practiced.”   
A thread of steel wool brushed her fingers as she pressed the sticky side of our explosive to the doorframe. The material—steel wool, flour, and a few wands of TNT—was heavy. But Violet molded it quietly like a professional sculptor. When she had the explosive adhered in its proper place, she nodded to me. I stuck in the detonator and we all stood back.   
Just like we practiced: rapid, shocking, unexpected, and overwhelmingly violent. Just like we practiced.   
I didn’t hear the explosion, but I sure felt it.   
The copper bath of emergency lighting powered by industrial generators suffused the room in reds and oranges. Violet was the first shooter to enter through the splintered door. She threw a flash-bang grenade, which landed in the center of the room, stunning the occupants. She turned left. That was the heavy side of the room; three Task Force mercenaries stood there, as opposed to two on the right side of the room. Her eyes snapped to her first target, a stocky man with a chestnut goatee and a pronounced widow’s peak. She slapped the trigger and he fell. Hard. He collapsed like someone had pulled his plug. Her left shoulder pressed against the wall as she stepped down the left side of the room. She acquired her second target as she walked. He was a towering man, young and eager. She shot him twice—once center mass, once between the eyes. The man managed to get a shot off, but it sailed high in the copper light.  
The bartender entered behind Violet, turning right. He looked straight to the far wall and swept right. Two bodies crumpled in his broad wake.  
I paused a bit before entering. This ensured that the attention of the Task Force personnel was drawn towards the first two shooters and away from the door. I entered. I turned left. My job was to work from the center of the room leftwards. Nobody walked while slapping triggers better than me. I knew Violet had full confidence in my skills.   
It was then that I shot Violet.


	23. Chapter 23

VIOLET HAD JUST REACHED the back left corner and was turning around, just like we had practiced. My first shot tore through Violet’s brachial artery. Her weapon clattered on the carpet. My second shot entered Violet’s stomach. She crumpled.   
At the same time, the bartender reached his corner and began pivoting.   
Hauser entered the room, gun ready.  
The bartender’s sights were sweeping towards the center of the room when Hauser shot him in the throat. Two bullets penetrated the bartender’s spine through his esophagus. He toppled awkwardly into the corner.   
Hauser was wearing a thick bulletproof vest over his plaid shirt. Pockets for ammunition, first aid, and communications gear bulged from his torso. A tranquil look adorned his face, pushing his brow astern. He and I looked at each other. Neither one of us moved. Usually when the shooting stopped the anarchists began looking for bad guys sitting among the hostages. But there were no hostages, fortunately. Planned, actually. The anarchists’ next task would have been to see if there were any explosives rigged around bodies, furniture, or interior structures. Check. No explosives. The main priority was always for the assault team to become very calm. This served several purposes. It was to assert a composed authority over any remaining enemy personnel. It also reassured hostages, and it helped us relax and control our bodies after such a violent display. I breathed deeply and holstered my pistol.   
I felt a giant weight lift off my shoulders.   
“Arghh!” I screamed, helping to expel my burden.   
For weeks, I had dove deeper than any mole in Task Force history; I’d infiltrated the anarchists and duped them completely. To be honest, I’d duped myself too. It was all part of meticulously crafting a cover and living it to the fullest. But that sick burden, including all the mental tricks—like talking about enjoyable subjects, like reading and nature, in order to escape—was now flying away.   
Blood drenched the carpet beneath Violet.   
Enough with the bullshit and the fake empathy. During my Task Force training I had achieved a difficult balance: learn about anarchism yet avoid feeling the world how anarchists felt the world. I had achieved this balance by treating anarchists as creatures to be studied, not understood. Once in a while I had inadvertently felt their pain, but most of the time I had just understood that they were in pain. They saw the world with clear eyes. They knew the society that oligarchs imposed upon the people was a bad society. They knew it had to change. I recognized such pain, but I was not about to ally with it. What do you call someone who knows pain, recognizes pain, and does nothing to alleviate that pain? I don’t know. Morality was not a factor for me. In this sense I was no different than the oligarchy.  
Hauser walked over to Violet.   
“That’s it. My mission is complete,” I asserted.   
I joined Hauser next to Violet. His massive frame dwarfed his bulletproof vest. He was looking down at Violet. How should I have characterized Violet in the moments before her death? I admired how Violet could care for all life. I, on the other hand, only indulged relatives and friends, never strangers. And even most of my relatives were dead to me. Self care and intuition motivated my choices. I recognized her empathy and ran from its narrow confines. I knew Violet was on the correct side of history, but the correct side wasn’t the winning side. She might’ve countered by telling me that we must be aware of our biases in order to get rid of them when making tough calls. But I did just that. I knew what I was doing from day one. I had embraced the big picture, saving myself at the expense of the majority.   
“I completed my mission,” I stressed to Hauser. “I isolated the best anarchists and brought them to you.”  
“You did,” Hauser affirmed, his eyes still locked on Violet. “I knew they’d love your hippie-dippy nature shit.”  
“That stuff was real,” I objected. I really loved the wonders of the natural world. “I didn’t have to fake that part. Learning anarchism, however… That took a lot of work.” I looked back on my study habits: read, look away, try to recall the info; take the anarchist theory you’re studying and write out a simple explanation, like you were a teacher; and go back to their thick anarchist texts only when you get stuck. It took a long time with this approach—the Feynman technique—but after enough repetition and practice I had more or less mastered enough anarchist knowledge to assimilate well.  
Hauser chuckled.  
Curled into a ball, Violet looked down at her stomach. A wound in her small intestine, I speculated. Maybe a liver. Liver would be bad. A good shot to the center of the liver would cause serious internal bleeding. She might survive a stomach wound, though with a subsequent bout of sepsis. Painful. But the arterial wound in her arm would do her in before the sun rose.   
Hauser broke his stare to listen to the two-way radio strapped to his shoulder. He relayed the information to me: “We’re getting our IT systems back up and running. Their cyber attack was good, but not great. Now we know what exploits they used. We’re patching them as we speak.”  
Violet bubbled a shriek. I stepped back, wondering about her pain, though genuine concern for the dead or dying was largely turned off inside of me. I envisioned her pain to be a profound burning—cramping muscles, knotting lungs, tearing vertebrae. Would the remaining anarchists shrug off my betrayal and keep going? Could they? I couldn’t expect everyone to be as cold and detached as me. Or as rational as me. I considered the ability to override bullshit emotions a gift.  
“You did good,” Hauser congratulated, turning to me.  
He shook my hand, crushing it. He turned quickly back to Violet.  
“You know we’ve got a clinic within these walls?” Hauser asked Violet.   
Violet closed her eyes, a vicious wince.   
“A catheter and some X-ray tools might stop the bleeding in your stomach. We could sew you up too.” He looked at me and then laughed. “Nah!” His teeth were splayed in deep ranks like the bite of a bull shark.  
My eyes flitted towards the bartender, his hand angled above his head as if frozen in an icy blast. I couldn’t recognize the man’s face amid the gory corner. The crimson blood blended well with the plush carpet’s design. This was the first time I really noticed the carpet’s detail. It was comfortable, though not as comfortable as the living quarters in the anarchist harbor. The carpet filled most of the room, except for a few centimeters or so at the base of the walls. A computer bank occupied the back left wall, the southeast corner of the room. A shattered tablet lay near the windows along the south wall.   
“You breach well,” Hauser complimented. “Did you teach them or did they teach you?”   
“A little bit of both,” I replied.   
“You look good, Terry.”  
“Thank you,” I replied. My name sounded strange.   
“Though ya’ll smell like nutsack. You know that?” Hauser ribbed. He pushed me like a quarterback might push a member of his offensive line.   
I laughed. “You sound like my first supervisor in Detroit.” I was happy to be done with my mission. I looked forward to leaving Chicago.  
“I can’t believe it,” Hauser stated, stepping back.  
“Me neither,” I said.   
“No,” Hauser corrected. He jutted his chiseled chin down towards Violet. “I finally get to meet the legend herself.”  
Violet’s eyes burned a hole in my forehead.   
“Terry?” she asked me. The rage washed away confusion as her face tightened up.   
“You really didn’t know?” I couldn’t help but gloat a bit.   
Spasms suddenly flooded Violet’s body. “So it was all bullshit?!” I could see her eyes itemizing all of the ways I might have betrayed the anarchists. She steamed like a teakettle.  
From the pockets lining his vest Hauser whipped out three sets of black handcuffs. He began restraining Violet. She squirmed a bit, but it seemed to me that she was now focused on resting in a way that minimized her bleeding. The blood still flowed though.  
“It was all bullshit?” Her voice was softer.  
“Not all of it,” I lulled. “Some of it was real. Becoming a mole requires an incredible amount of study.”  
“Study…” Violet repeated, astounded.   
“Why do you think I read so much? The Task Force has decent files on anarchist operations within the city. A lot of detail, but a lot of gaps too.”  
“Study…” Violet again repeated.  
“I read to be a better mole.” And my love of the natural world had been an exceptional aide.  
Violet flailed her legs, useless in the restraints.  
“I am dedicated to my craft. Dedicated.”   
“You let us in?” she asked.  
I shrugged. “I was carrying out my orders. It was better to kill you in here. Get you all in one place. Cleaner and more fitting,” I explained. “Let you all think you’d made progress, then crush you in one fell swoop. Plus… the boss wanted you…”  
“But… Hew’s Tomb… You moved assets there…”  
“You wanna know why we’ve moved all our assets to Hew’s Tomb?” Hauser asked, clearly delighting in the moment. “Because we’re expanding the prison and adding new command posts there. It has nothing to do with the fake information you planted in our systems.”  
Violet blinked.   
“Go ahead. Take over NSA Strough. Not much left here to grapple with.”  
Violet hung her head. She closed her eyes gently. “I should’ve known; you use too much capitalist lingo…” Violet’s eyes tightened, her voice fading.  
Footsteps.   
We turned around.  
Two sweaty young men entered the room. Drenched and smelling like cordite, they snapped to attention as they halted in front of Hauser.   
“Sector B secure, sir!” they said in unison.   
“Proceed to Sector D and report to Major Schultze,” Hauser ordered. His eyes never left Violet.   
“Yes sir!” They double-timed it out of the room.   
“And lock down this wing!” Hauser yelled after them.   
Their footsteps faded.   
“Where were we?” Hauser asked. He nudged Violet with the toe of his boot.   
Her breathing was slow.   
“When can I get a shower and some chow?” I asked.   
“Soon. Our security officer will be here in about ten minutes to take you to debriefing. We might have to change rooms depending on how our counterattack is progressing.”  
“Think you’ll have the anarchists beat by sunrise?”  
“Without a doubt.”   
“You know they’ve got forces coming in from the cliffs?” I asked.  
“We’ve already got the stragglers,” Hauser replied. His eyes broke from Violet’s, and he nodded firmly to me.  
I looked out the window. The waxing moon beamed through the breezy night. Had all of the anarchists come ashore? How many had been captured? Most killed? Any still left in the forest? The compound? Dense parties of bioluminescent bacteria glazed the milky Lake like a freshly fallen snow.  
“What is that?” Hauser asked. “It’s like a sunken blizzard.”  
“Mass spawning,” I muttered to myself.  
“Different creatures, synchronizing their behavior?” Hauser asked.   
I looked out over the land. I eyed the forest. It was gorgeous, I hadn’t been lying to myself about that. I stepped away from the window and sat down, my back against the wall.   
“How are you going to play this?” I asked, referring to the attack, the likes of which no public relations firm could totally conceal.   
“Play this? Clichéd asshole,” Hauser ribbed. His laugh boomed off the walls. He looked secure in his nest.  
I smiled. Joking with Hauser nourished me like a drink of cold water laced with dioxin.  
“You know I’m having dinner tomorrow night with a certain woman who recently spent some time in your dungeon,” Hauser told Violet.  
“Oh, really?” I asked. “How’s she doing? She looked pretty roughed up when I saw her last.”  
“She’s healing well. You’re welcome to join us, if you’re up for it.”  
“Well, I can’t exactly go back with them,” I said. “I’d rather get out of town, though. My mission is done,” I asserted.  
“Good point.” He walked around Violet’s crumpled heap.  
I focused on letting my shoulders relax. They sunk. I had been holding a lot of stress up there. I breathed deeply. I was energized.   
Violet stirred. “Did you learn nothing?” she asked the room.  
“That’s the problem with you anarchists,” I responded. “That’s the thing I hated becoming. You have no intellectual humility. You think you’re right, and you think you’re right all the goddamn time. Nobody is changing your opinion.”  
She shook her head.  
“Know when to surrender,” I advised her.  
“Oh, we do. I’ll ask you again, did you learn nothing?” She pursed her lips knowingly.  
I looked at her, my smile faded. Was my guard down? I stood up and walked over to her. I had a clear advantage. She was bound—hands together, feet together. Even the cuffs around her hands and feet were cuffed together. She looked like a spent lemon wedge.  
“We might not win every battle,” she gurgled, “but knowing when to retreat is a lesson you’ve never learned.” She sputtered like an antique hatchback.  
Hauser kicked her in the ribs.   
I winced.   
“Our aim is enduring success.” Her gurgle dove into a frothy mutter as she struggled to retain consciousness.  
I was tired. Though anarchists were fascinating creatures, I was tired of playing the game. I had won myself some time and space. I wanted to leave Chicago, leave all of this behind as Hauser moved on to a leadership position in the Central Bureau of National Intelligence.  
Violet looked cold to the bones. The anarchist leader, though she’d never call herself that, was dying at my feet.  
She muttered loudly but indiscernibly.   
“What’s that?” I asked. I bent down.  
“Do you know how I knew the Cardinal was coming, back in the forest?” Her voice was clear, crisp.   
“No. No I don’t.” I couldn’t have cared less. I thought about the treetops outside the fortress walls.  
“I hadn’t seen the bird,” she informed me. “Nor had I heard its distinct cheer.”   
“So?”   
Violet tested her restraints. The metal links tightened.   
“I had heard the cries of other animals, insects the cardinal preys upon. That’s how I knew it was coming. Their alerts let me know.”   
Violet’s words bounced right off me. Exhaustion was taking over. I held my pistol across my palms. It felt heavier than usual. The safety flicked off smoothly. I wrapped my warm hands around the grip. I hadn’t seen the front sights in a while. They looked small and fragile.  
“You’re missing the point,” Violet noted, her voice authoritative.   
Where did she get this strength? I’d have passed out already. No matter.  
“Why don’t you make your damn point then?”   
“We know your game plan, not because you gave yourself away. No. You were an outstanding double agent. I applaud your work. No. We know your game plan because we’ve paid attention to others. We’ve paid attention to—”  
A blur darted through the open doorway, fire spraying from its carbine.   
My heart sank—creaked, rather—in my chest.   
“Bala,” I whispered, turning so my body armor would take the bullets head on. My arm rose to get a shot off. Too late. Bullets had already entered my body. One shattered my humerus bone, just above my elbow. One nicked the back of my left calf. My pistol fell.  
Bala shot Hauser twice. One bullet grazed his head and the other embedded in the right side of his pelvis. He rolled towards the wall.   
She was on me in a heartbeat, a hatchet glistening in her hand.  
Her hatchet arched like lightning. It missed its mark, taking a chunk of my right shoulder with it. Her movements were brutal, like a lumberjack on her tenth swing of the morning. I plucked my knife from my leg sheath and countered with an overhead swing, but Bala moved her hatchet swiftly to a defensive position right in front of her.  
She ducked and spiked her shoulder into my gut, the force of which nearly knocked the knife out of my left hand. Mid-air, I steadied my body by grabbing fists of her shirt. This helped me sprawl my legs out behind me. Feet planted, I ripped her to the side and roared upward, the blade in my right hand headed for her exposed throat. As she lurched sideways, she clawed at a patch of my muddy hair, pulling my neck down and successfully folding the distance between us. My own knife was now dangerously close to my chin.  
Bala’s eyes raged. She bared her incisors, fangs in the low light. Knowing I was fully focused on the knife inching towards my throat, Bala cleaved a bit of my sciatic nerve with one whirl of her hatchet. My left leg gave way. More chops rent tendons, hewed flesh, severed ligaments, and pierced organs.  
Then, on the drizzly downside of life, the oddest feeling struck me: I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Not the tears you get when a loved one dies. Nor the tears you get when you stub your toe on a heavy piece of furniture. More like the tears you get when you ride your bike on a windy day. They just show up as part of the scene. I didn’t know if Bala noticed my tears. Probably. She was a very perceptive person. It was just odd that, after faking a few tears in recent weeks, real ones showed up when I least expected them. My knife fell to the carpet. Bala kicked it away from me. She now held her hatchet in her left hand, her knife in her right. We rolled left, my right hand now gripping her left. The black blade of her knife burnished brightly between both of us.   
She kneed me in the groin, forcing any remaining strength out of me. The butt of her hatchet tolled into my left ear. I careened to the ground. Bala pounced. Her knees dug into my body, pinning my elbows to the ground. Three flashes flushed my ribs and arms. My limbs spurted a lush red. My right carotid artery was nicked. Bala picked me up and tossed me, clearing the way for her imminent scrap with Hauser. She rotated the carbine from her back and discharged one more bullet at me before squaring her feet towards Hauser. The bullet broke through my ribs and lodged in my lower spine. I staggered backwards, my skull cracking against the wall. I sunk, coming to rest below the window. I tried to move my legs but nothing happened. It was like trying to move the hair on my forearms. Nothing happened. Paralyzed. I was paralyzed from the waist down. But I still processed my surroundings.   
Hauser was shaking off the bullet that had grazed his head. He looked dazed. He got to his feet and charged at Bala. In the split second before he hit, she tossed her carbine on the floor. She wanted a fair fight. Admirable. I kept my pistol trained on Bala the best I could. Though Hauser was wounded, he still could take her. I knew he could. No. No. I had no pistol. My mind was playing tricks on me. I hadn’t even raised my hand. I was losing it. Sanity, not blood. Okay, maybe a little blood. I noticed I was wheezing. Had a bullet punctured one of my lungs? I tried moving my legs. Again, no response. There was no tingle, no dead feeling, no nothing. It was a bizarre claustrophobia. Two bullets rang out somewhere in the fortress below.  
Hauser tackled Bala, lifting her up. Mid-flight, with all four of their feet in the air, Bala shed Hauser’s shoulder. With a flash and a screech, she thrust a thick black blade into Hauser’s hulking upper back. She was a bullfighter placing a banderilla exactly where she wanted.  
He snarled. He tucked, rolled, and recovered onto his feet. As he stood up, cradling his right arm, Bala pounced towards his left leg. Her shoulder connected crisply with his kneecap, which gave way immediately. It bent backwards as if it were a natural occurrence, looking a bit like a canine’s elbow joint. Hauser brought his left fist down on Bala’s back. As they fell together, Bala bit into Hauser’s calf. She bit with such force that her body rotated to align with her neck and mouth. Stance disabled, Hauser dropped like a canvas duffle filled with metal Army helmets.  
Bala moved like a rabid raccoon. She scrambled behind Hauser, yanked her knife from his back and swung it around front. She clung to his back with powerful thighs as they rolled together onto their sides. Hauser looked like he was struggling to right himself; his left leg flopped meekly. Bala’s two hands pulled the blade towards Hauser’s neck. He pushed back. Breath by breath, the blade closed in on Hauser’s throat. From my vantage point his delicate throat looked like a flimsy bubble covered in petroleum sheen. Had I been in a different mood, I might have come up with an analysis comparing his underlying fragility to something inherent in the human spirit, but, alas, I had nothing left in my tank. I closed my eyes and played a reed woodwind instrument in my mind—an oboe, maybe—as the battle subsided. I didn’t hear the blade enter Hauser’s throat. I just heard a meaty grunt.  
I inhaled deeply and opened my eyes. Hauser’s face was turned away from me, but I pictured his eyes bulging, knowing. He was aware. His penitence knelled. His heel clacked on the soft carpet. Once, twice, thrice. On the third clack, his head rotated towards me. Only the whites of his eyes showed.   
Bala gurgled hoarsely as she straightened up on tired feet. A vicious trough ran across her right cheek. Darkness spread across her t-shirt, its cloth clinging to her thin frame beneath her body armor.   
Two anarchists—I hadn’t seen them before, but I could tell their allegiance based on their choice of clothing—entered the room. They swept the room methodically, rapidly. One posted at the door while the other whispered something to Bala, who, in turn, whispered back while gesturing to Violet and the bartender. The two anarchists left as quickly as they had arrived.   
Bala leapt to Violet’s side. Both of them ignored me. As they should have done from the beginning. I smiled. We were all so petty.   
Bala tended to Violet’s wounds rapidly and efficiently. She paused several times, just long enough to whisper motivation in Violet’s ear. All I heard was, “… eternal life …” After dressing and bandaging Violet, Bala jimmied open the handcuffs with what looked like a lengthy, flat aluminum pin. One of the lights overhead winked out.  
“One moment,” Bala told Violet, caressing her shoulder before standing up.  
Bala returned to Hauser’s body and shot him, double-tap, center of the forehead. She returned to Violet’s side, posthaste.  
“I never thanked you,” Bala cooed.  
“For what?”   
“For rescuing me from Hew’s Tomb. Thank you.”  
A bead of sweat fell from Violet’s pale brow, a tear from Bala’s cheek.  
“I told you I wasn’t a paragon of virtue,” I yelled, through aching ribs. I had stifled so much of my personality over the past months that yelling was a real treat for me. Violet yelled at me to shut up, but I ignored her. I told them about Hauser, the man dead in the middle of the room, half of his life still ahead of him. He had run some of the most legendary operations, including injecting a toxic pellet into an enemy while Honest Abe Lincoln looked on, as an audience of a pick-up fútbol game cheered. The operation had caught the eye of a rising Senator. Hauser had then guided the Combined Joint Task Force – Chicago Cook County through a time of incredible growth. And recently he had destroyed most anarchist sanctuaries throughout the city. A true professional.  
Nausea beat me up, radiating in the depths of my gullet.   
Violet rolled towards me. Blood coated her chin like red wine on a sotto’s face.   
“Before I finish…” I fumbled for the right words.   
“You’re one of us, you know?”  
“I—”  
“Lots of settlers used to defect to the Native American camps during the colonial period. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”  
“I—”  
“You know we’re the future.” Bala gestured to Violet and the dead bartender. “Kill us, fine, but you can’t kill the movement.”  
“State violence has worked throughout modern history to squash progressive and radical movements.” I coughed and then force myself to swallow my cough. It hurt. “It will work again.”  
“That’s your calculus? Times change, bud,” Violet avowed.   
I vomited. I didn’t even turn my head. The vomit warmed my lap. Or maybe I imagined the warmth. “That’s my reasoning. You might be right. Might. But I’m—”  
“You’re nothing but emotional stardust who doesn’t realize he’s an asshole.”  
“I can’t hear you,” I said. That was partially true. My left ear had stopped working.  
“There’s more…”  
The edges of my vision dimmed. “You should have known. Your buddy Sun Tzu used all sorts of spies. I guess I’d be a surviving spy, huh?”  
Violet’s eyes were riveted to mine. Locked on. I observed her mouth twitch, like she was suppressing a devilish grin. “There’s more life in a dead tree than in a living one.”  
Bala straightened up and walked towards my crippled self. The collar of her t-shirt poked out from underneath her black body armor. Her bangs laid flat. Blood coated her thin lips. Her characteristic flush still scorched her cheeks.  
“Tell me,” Bala rumbled. “After I’d escaped Hew’s Tomb, why’d they call back their aircraft when they had us all confined in one submersible?” She put a knuckle up to her right nostril and blew bloody mucus to the floor.  
“You don’t think they’d bomb their best mole, do you?” I replied slowly. My ribs tightened.  
“Fuck you and your sacrifice,” Bala goaded. Her words echoed distantly. She kicked me in the ribs. I was calm, at peace. The charade of life was ending.  
Bala muttered something as she kneeled next to me and began squeezing my throat.  
My vision bleached and nipped out. I departed as a lake breeze bent sooty tendrils away from the spires of Naval Support Activity Strough.


End file.
